‘Blame potholes on road digging’

President of Nagrik Chetana Manch (NCM), Maj Gen (retd) SCN Jatar, said the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) can take only partial blame for potholes on the city’s roads.

The main cause for the problem is the uncontrolled digging of holes on the roads for the Ganesh festival, he added.

In a letter to municipal commissioner Mahesh Pathak Jatar said that an analysis by NCM shows that potholes arise due to both natural causes and the limitations of road construction.

He said Ganesh mandals dig holes on the roads during Ganesh festival for erecting pandals and for displaying advertisements on public roads to earn money, which is not legitimate.

He said rainwater flows along the line of least resistance. Hence, seepage through the earth filling in the holes made by mandals enters the bed of the road. If it rains during the festival, the water has a free run to the roadbed.

He said during the following winter and summer, the surface tends to become brittle due to low temperatures and high heat, causing the surface to crack. The expansion-contraction cycle creates sideways stresses in the roadbed, which has already weakened due to seepage of water.

Vehicles continue to run over the destabilised road, putting even more stress on the thin asphalt or tar layer on the surface. The surface layer of asphalt then collapses, resulting in potholes, he added.

The activist said the pothole repairing technique of the PMC is inadequate. The road repair teams do not scrape the sides vertically, the tar mix for laying is not at the designated temperature (150 degree Celcius to 166 degree Celcius) and there is inadequate compaction.

Roadrollers are often not at hand for compacting while the asphalt mix is sufficiently hot. Due to this inadequate compaction, pothole portions settle unevenly during traffic. As the sides are not vertically scraped, lateral pressures tend to apply unevenly when potholes are loaded, causing the sides to collapse.

The activist said the potholes sites are generally the same year after year, mainly because of incorrect repair techniques. Further, there are more potholes where the roads either do not have side drains or if they are ill-maintained.

He said no road, however well constructed, can last unless it has a camber (incline on both the sides) and side drains to channel water away from the road.

Stating that there is no political will to tackle digging of roads by religious and cultural organisations, Jatar said citizens undergo the agony of travelling on potholes and sustain the economic loss of continuous road repairs.