DC | M. Roushan Ali | 5 hours 56 min ago
Bad roads at Rathifile trouble commuters. Officials have turned a blind-eye towards their suffering. —S. SURENDER Reddy
Hyderabad: All the roads in the city are in a bad shape making driving a torment. Several stretches of roads have not been repaired at all, while with others, the repair work is so shoddy it has made the road worse than before.
Experts in road engineering, traffic and transportation said the roads will continue to pose a major problem every year, particularly during the monsoon, because the GHMC does not have a professional approach. No action is taken against Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation engineers for building bad roads and the contractors are let off after a meagre penalty is extracted under the defect liability clause.
Social activist and advocate Venu Gopal demanded a CBI enquiry into the assets of the engineer-in-chief, the chief engineer and all other engineers (both retired and in service for the last 15 years), alleging a nexus between the engineers and contractors who profit from shoddily-built roads.
Some experts are asking for a global professional agency to be called in to build one or two ‘all-weather roads’ that last for at least 10-years to demonstrate that such a thing is possible. What causes great damage to roads is the poor drainage system.
If rain and drain water stagnates on the road nothing can save the bitumen from being washed away, a transportation expert said. There must be a drainage system on either side of roads for the bitumen to last longer.
Professor N. V. Ramana Rao of the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University said the GHMC should first stop its routine re-carpeting of roads with bitumen. “Specifications for construction of roads vary from one corridor to another depending on the fitness of the existing road, present and projected traffic volume and weight. None of these are followed by GHMC contractors and the civic officials don't insist they do so,” he said.
Moreover, there is no coordination between the GHMC, police, Water Board, Central Discom and APTransco etc, so that once a road is re-carpeted it could very well be dug up a short while later by some other agency to lay pipelines and cables. Over Rs 200 crore is spent in all by various agencies in the city for construction, recarpeting and repair of roads in the city every year.
Dr S. Nagabhushan Rao, adviser to the World Bank-aided Road Safety Project in Andhra Pradesh said the main problem with the roads in Hyderabad is that they were designed a long time ago when the vehicle-volume and load was much less.
“What is needed is strengthening of the road base, the layers and the entire road itself after a detailed evaluation of the present and projected traffic volume and load,” he said. He pointed out that roads must be regularly maintained instead of the ‘damage management’ that is being done currently.
GHMC Commissioner M.T. Krishna Babu said consultants appointed by the civic body conducted detailed traffic volume and load studies of 165-km accumulated length of main roads and recommended reconstruction of roads based on projected traffic volume. It will cost Rs 5-7 crore per kilometre to construct such roads.
“We sought traffic police’s permission to construct such roads on three stretches i.e. Lakdikapul to Masab Tank, Indira Park to RTC cross roads and Kachiguda railway station road in phase one. But we did not get the their permission,” he said.
Additional commissioner of police (traffic) Amit Garg said the traffic police is willing to give permission to the GHMC to start construction of quality roads if they work on small stretches at a time so that traffic does get totally disrupted. The GHMC could come again with this proposal, he added.
Land given but road not laid:
Eight years after a portion of the landmark Diamond Point cafe building was demolished and hundreds of families voluntarily surrendered their lands because they were promised additional floor space index, neither has the road been widened, nor have any benefits accrued to the property owners.
For eight years now the Secunderabad Cantonment Board has been sitting on a proposal to widen seven main roads in the cantonment limits. Traffic jams on West Marredpally main road during schools hours, at Diamond Point junction near Sikh village, at Balam Rai and Tad Bund junctions — you name any road and junction in the cantonment and it is a traffic nightmare.
“What was the point of surrendering our property to provide right of way for road widening? Normally, road widening is delayed due to problems in acquisition of private properties. But here is a case where civilians have surrendered their properties but government authorities — in this case the Army and crucial defence installations — have blocked the road development project. The cantonment officials should have first acquired Army land and then approached the civilians," said K. K. Reddy, owner of a building near Diamond Point Café.
A senior official in the Cantonment Board told this correspondent that 26 acres of land belonging to the Army is required to widen the seven corridors. Most of the land falls under A-1 category and it has to be converted into Category-C to be acquired by the Cantonment.
“Though the Army authorities have been verbally assuring full cooperation for road widening, there is no action from their side to show the same cooperation on paper, which is essential for the SCB to go ahead with acquisition and road widening,” an official said.
States: Andhra Pradesh
Hyderabad: All the roads in the city are in a bad shape making driving a torment. Several stretches of roads have not been repaired at all, while with others, the repair work is so shoddy it has made the road worse than before.
Experts in road engineering, traffic and transportation said the roads will continue to pose a major problem every year, particularly during the monsoon, because the GHMC does not have a professional approach. No action is taken against Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation engineers for building bad roads and the contractors are let off after a meagre penalty is extracted under the defect liability clause.
Social activist and advocate Venu Gopal demanded a CBI enquiry into the assets of the engineer-in-chief, the chief engineer and all other engineers (both retired and in service for the last 15 years), alleging a nexus between the engineers and contractors who profit from shoddily-built roads.
Some experts are asking for a global professional agency to be called in to build one or two ‘all-weather roads’ that last for at least 10-years to demonstrate that such a thing is possible. What causes great damage to roads is the poor drainage system.
If rain and drain water stagnates on the road nothing can save the bitumen from being washed away, a transportation expert said. There must be a drainage system on either side of roads for the bitumen to last longer.
Professor N. V. Ramana Rao of the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University said the GHMC should first stop its routine re-carpeting of roads with bitumen. “Specifications for construction of roads vary from one corridor to another depending on the fitness of the existing road, present and projected traffic volume and weight. None of these are followed by GHMC contractors and the civic officials don't insist they do so,” he said.
Moreover, there is no coordination between the GHMC, police, Water Board, Central Discom and APTransco etc, so that once a road is re-carpeted it could very well be dug up a short while later by some other agency to lay pipelines and cables. Over Rs 200 crore is spent in all by various agencies in the city for construction, recarpeting and repair of roads in the city every year.
Dr S. Nagabhushan Rao, adviser to the World Bank-aided Road Safety Project in Andhra Pradesh said the main problem with the roads in Hyderabad is that they were designed a long time ago when the vehicle-volume and load was much less.
“What is needed is strengthening of the road base, the layers and the entire road itself after a detailed evaluation of the present and projected traffic volume and load,” he said. He pointed out that roads must be regularly maintained instead of the ‘damage management’ that is being done currently.
GHMC Commissioner M.T. Krishna Babu said consultants appointed by the civic body conducted detailed traffic volume and load studies of 165-km accumulated length of main roads and recommended reconstruction of roads based on projected traffic volume. It will cost Rs 5-7 crore per kilometre to construct such roads.
“We sought traffic police’s permission to construct such roads on three stretches i.e. Lakdikapul to Masab Tank, Indira Park to RTC cross roads and Kachiguda railway station road in phase one. But we did not get the their permission,” he said.
Additional commissioner of police (traffic) Amit Garg said the traffic police is willing to give permission to the GHMC to start construction of quality roads if they work on small stretches at a time so that traffic does get totally disrupted. The GHMC could come again with this proposal, he added.
Land given but road not laid:
Eight years after a portion of the landmark Diamond Point cafe building was demolished and hundreds of families voluntarily surrendered their lands because they were promised additional floor space index, neither has the road been widened, nor have any benefits accrued to the property owners.
For eight years now the Secunderabad Cantonment Board has been sitting on a proposal to widen seven main roads in the cantonment limits. Traffic jams on West Marredpally main road during schools hours, at Diamond Point junction near Sikh village, at Balam Rai and Tad Bund junctions — you name any road and junction in the cantonment and it is a traffic nightmare.
“What was the point of surrendering our property to provide right of way for road widening? Normally, road widening is delayed due to problems in acquisition of private properties. But here is a case where civilians have surrendered their properties but government authorities — in this case the Army and crucial defence installations — have blocked the road development project. The cantonment officials should have first acquired Army land and then approached the civilians," said K. K. Reddy, owner of a building near Diamond Point Café.
A senior official in the Cantonment Board told this correspondent that 26 acres of land belonging to the Army is required to widen the seven corridors. Most of the land falls under A-1 category and it has to be converted into Category-C to be acquired by the Cantonment.
“Though the Army authorities have been verbally assuring full cooperation for road widening, there is no action from their side to show the same cooperation on paper, which is essential for the SCB to go ahead with acquisition and road widening,” an official said.
States: Andhra Pradesh
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