Mumbai: The scrutiny committee of the state government has given a green signal to the BMC to carry out the pothole repair work. Accordingly, the work order will be issued in the next week to fill bad patches with mastic asphalt technology. The civic body will be spending Rs.106 crore for the pothole-free monsoon this year.
Pothole Filling Tenders and Road Improvement Plans Await Election Commission Approval In Mumbai
The BMC had invited tenders to fill potholes/bad patches on the road with width of less than 9 metres for seven zones in March. The civic body also has plans to carry out improvement of Western Express Highway (WEH) and Eastern Express Highway (EEH).
However, with the model code of conduct in place for the Lok Sabha election, the BMC had sent these proposals for approval of the Election Commission (EC). "Since the pothole repair works are carried out annually, we were informed that the proposal won't require EC permission. So the work will be carried out from next week," confirmed a senior civic official.
The city has a network of around 2,050 Km of roads, out of which, around 1,000 km have been concretised. The BMC has decided to concretise all the roads to make them pothole-free. Accordingly, the BMC has undertaken concretisation of 397 kilometres of roads at a cost of Rs6,080 crore last year. Till now, only 20% of the work has been completed.
Evaluating Road Treatments And Technologies In Mumbai
As per civic officials, the chemical aesthetics applied to roads get washed away during a heavy downpour. The pothole-ridden roads during every monsoon have been a matter of concern for the city. The BMC used reactive asphalt and rapid hardening of concrete to repair the potholes at the beginning of last year. However, mastic technology was used later as it was found to be useful, while other technologies had certain limitations. The civic body has earlier used jet patching machines, Austrian and Israeli asphalt mix technology.
