Going through ‘bad patch’

BMC says number of potholes on roads has reduced; citizens find holes in its claim

Even as the civic body maintains that the number of potholes on city roads has reduced from 43,000 in 2006 to 840 ‘bad patches’ this year, citizens and transport experts find ‘holes’ in the claim.

Juggling numbers
Statistics from the civic roads and traffic department suggest that there are only 840 bad patches in the city. In 2006, the city had 43,000 potholes.

Such was the condition of roads that the Bombay high court last year appointed an expert committee to oversee civic roadwork.

Civic officials will have you believe that this is past now. Statistics from the road department on Friday indicated that of the 840 bad patches, 385 had been attended to.

DL Shinde, chief engineer, roads and traffic department, attributed the improvement to use of modern technology and better road quality. He said several hundred kilometres had been taken up for concretisation and paver-blocking over the last two years.

‘Define bad patch’
While most citizens said the numbers were understated, others questioned the definition of a bad patch. Social activist Nikhil Desai said, “BMC should come clean on what comprises a bad patch and how long can the patch be.”

Civic officials agreed there was no clarity on it and the patch could extend from five to 50 meter in length. Desai said that while officials had shown 18 bad patches in his ward at Matunga, the number was several times more.

Even Mayor Shubha Raul recently expressed dissatisfaction over the monsoon preparedness for roads.

Worst hit roads
Roads in the western suburbs have the highest number of bad stretches. While 76 of them are in Andheri, roads in Santa Cruz and Vile Parle have 55, and Bandra roads have 58 potholes.
Mankhurd, Govandi, and Trombay in the eastern suburbs have the worst potholed roads.

Officials peg the number of bad stretches on these roads at 66.
Roads in the plush localities of Colaba and Nariman Point are the least potholed.

Holes in civic pocket
Potholes have made severe dent in the country’s richest municipal corporation’s treasury over the last three years. BMC spent over Rs21 crore on pothole repair in 2006.

Considering that there were 43,000 potholes, the cost came to Rs4,883 per pothole. While the number of potholes decreased to 13,200 in 2007, the money spent on repair increased to Rs27 crore.

The cost per pothole increased almost fourfold to Rs20,454.
Civic officials said the cost of filling a 1 sq m pothole was Rs600.

Going by this logic, in 2006 and 2007, each pothole in 2006 was at least 8.1 sq m in size, while that in 2007 was 34.09 sq m. Civic officials objected to the correlation, but activists like Nilesh Baxi said the spending on pothole repair needed to be looked into.

This year, Rs25 crore has been set aside for
pothole repair.