There is a lot of frustration among citizens about the state of the city roads these days. THere seems to be a spree of activities from the govt side to 'quickly' fix the issue considering the major elections coming soon
However what is sorely being missed is the question on why did the potholes surface and the reason is not just the primiitve way the asphalting is being done in the city but boils down to what lays way below the street surface. What is underneath the surface will decide the health of the surface.
So fixing a pothole is NOT a shovel and some hot bitumen!
TenderSURE roads were a step in the right direction, but has some major design flaws in itself
To understand the reasons behind potholes we need to look into the situations which led to them:
- Heavy traffic loads
- Water stagnation/drainage issues
- Utility digging by various depts
And for all this, there is only one solution. A proper design of the road.
Below is a crosssection of the road design model. As can be seen the storm water drain is right in the middle of carriage way and acts as a collctor for the runoff from the surface of the road and also from the side of the road (footpath and buildings)
This is totally missing in our cities road design. We at best have some sewage drain setup which also takes in storm water and this is the reason why the sewage lines overflow at the manholes when there is a storm.
Coming to other utiliy lines, its free for all..anyone govt or private is allowed to dig wherever they want to lay their lines without any coordination
This constantly leads to degradation of the surface and always looks like a warzone..with huge craters.
Constant rains make the matter worse. So unless we fix the design below the surface of the road, whatever makeup we put at the surface will never fix anything! It will be complete waste of money and resourses.
This is applicable to the roads being whitetopped too!
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