The crumbling roads in Salt Lake continue to worsen with fresh craters forming every day and deep potholes appearing on stretches that received patchwork repairs.

On Tuesday, Metro went around the township and in all three sectors bad roads turned the ride into a bone-jarring experience.

At a meeting in Nabanna on June 24, chief minister Mamata Banerjee had pointed out several irregularities in the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) and said she was ashamed of Salt Lake. She also came down on the councillors and said they didn’t look after the roads, lights or water supply.

A section of Third Avenue that leads to Bidhannagar College from City Centre is peppered with ditches.

On several stretches, the road has subsidence, especially around places where the Salt Lake civic body conducted patchwork repairs. As a result, cars shake and sway as they drive and two-wheelers have to reduce their speed to a crawl to avoid skidding off the road.

The civic body had done patchwork repairs on a stretch of First Cross Road from the Banchharam’s outlet in Sector III to the GD island on Broadway.

Most of the patches have worn away and deep potholes have appeared.

The asphalt layer on the road in front of the SN Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences in JD Block and the one near the animal resources department (ARD) office have disappeared.

Loose stone chips there make it dangerous for vehicles as wheels tend to skid and lose traction. Also, stone pieces fly off like missiles as vehicles pass and can injure anybody walking down the stretch.

Sumanta Dutta, a resident of KC Block, said “minor accidents take place here every other day but it is a miracle that nobody is grievously hurt yet”.

“Almost every other day there is an accident here. Mostly two-wheeler riders skid and fall off. The entire road has turned into a death trap,” Dutta said.

BMC deputy mayor Anita Mondal, who is also the mayoral council member in charge of roads, said patchwork repairs will be carried out on the broken stretches.

“We are aware of the state of roads in Salt Lake. We are doing patchwork repairs. Stretches where patchwork repairs have worn away will be repaired. But for the repairs, we need a dry spell of at least a few weeks,” said Mondal.

Patchwork repairs, during which the potholes are filled and the entire road is not relaid, is what the BMC has been banking on.

The civic body has not carried out extensive repairs or relaid any of the roads in more than eight years.

An engineer of the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) said a
road surface laid with mastic asphalt or concrete outlasts a surface redone with bitumen. Mastic asphalt could be laid in a short span of time and even in between spells of rain.