Date:03/11/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/11/03/stories/2007110354320600.htm

Tamil Nadu

Patch work on potholed roads planned

Staff Reporter

— File Photo: R. Ragu

In shambles: A badly damaged road in Vyasarpadi.

Chennai: Quality of roads in the city has become a major concern as several arterial roads have started developing potholes after the recent rains.

The potholes have become a traffic hazard as motorists abruptly veer to avoid them, giving vehicles behind them very little time to react to the change in direction. This can cause vehicles to collide, say traffic police.

Paper Mills Road in Perambur, Ram Nagar 10th Main Road in Velachery, North Usman Road in T. Nagar, R.K. Mutt Road in Mylapore and Pantheon Road in Egmore had developed potholes and the Chennai Corporation has planned patch work on most of them.

“The Corporation is taking up road repairs at a cost of Rs.70 lakh,” its Commissioner Rajesh Lakhoni said. Samples of road construction material used by contractors are tested for quality before the roads are laid, he said.

Rainwater, which stagnates on roads for 48 hours or more, can erode the surface of roads. Hence, desilting of stormwater drains is directly connected to road maintenance.

Mayor M. Subramanian inspected G.N. Chetty Road on Thursday to review the pumping out of stagnant water. The road was completely water-logged on Sunday and Monday, said R. Ramani, a resident of T. Nagar.

Stormwater drains are being constructed for a length of 800 metres on G.N. Chetty Road and high power motor pumps would be kept as stand-by, Corporation officials said.

Road height

Some residents are also concerned about the rising height of roads. K. Vedamurthy, a resident of 28th Cross Street in Indira Nagar, said the roads were re-laid allowing accumulated rain water to get into houses.

Another problem with the rise in road levels is that manholes have sunk.

On newly resurfaced roads, the height of manholes has not been increased leading to a new set of depressions that are as bad as potholes. The digging around the manholes further expands the crater formed on the roads. A case in point is the Royapettah High Road. Too many manholes on a short stretch also pose problems for the motorists, as is the case with the Velachery Main Road near Kannigapuram.

For many of them it is an ordeal as the series of manholes come after a sharp turn, where yellow line violation is not uncommon, for those bound for Velachery. A few of the manholes on the narrow stretch were levelled to match the road surface recently. While negotiating the manholes that have not been levelled many motorists tend to violate the yellow line. The Corporation has decided to scrape the road surface before re-laying to overcome this problem.

The method had been tried earlier but had affected the road foundation.

Hence, about half of the road width (about 20 mm of a 40-mm road) would be scraped off and re-laid. However, the Corporation would have to decide how to dispose of the scraped off bitumen as it cannot be re-used for road-laying.