BMC turns to concrete to make pothole-free roads

A potholed road at Cotton Green junction. File pic

In the coming years, Mumbai roads will be 100 per cent concrete, with the BMC planning to use cement even for the strips on both sides that were made of asphalt to facilitate laying utility cables. After working on a few pilot projects, it plans to spend Rs 2,200-crore on fully concretising the roads and will set aside Rs 45 crore to relocate utility cables and lines under the roads.

The BMC spends between Rs 1,500-Rs 2,000 crore on roads every year. This is apart from the budget allocation for big-ticket projects like the coastal road, GMLR and bridges. The city has a road network of 2,000 km of which 750 km roads are already concretised.

Until now, the sides of main cement concrete roads were made of asphalt to allow digging for utility cables, which will be moved to other locations in future.

Concrete roads last for decades, say civic officials

Officials said potholes are the main trigger for the decision. It will pave the way for more than 600 concrete roads, particularly in the suburbs, that are less than 18 metres wide. Many such roads have a width less than 6 metres.

The work will be spread over the next two to three financial years.

"The life of asphalt roads is 5 to 10 years. Trenches for various utilities make these roads more vulnerable. They damage the structure, allow water to penetrate which ultimately damages the roads. To get rid of trenches, the corporation had earlier taken up a project to find all the utility cables through GPS and make utility ducts. The project did not succeed," said an official from the BMC.

Another official from the road department said, "The asphalt passage on the side strips of roads provides space to dig up the road for utility. But people complain about potholes on these stretches. Now, the BMC has come up with the solution to cover the whole roads with concrete."

"We will try to provide utility ducts under new roads wherever possible. On narrow roads, it is not possible to bunch all the cables on one side. But we will construct the roads in such a way that the repairing and fixing of utility cables can be done by trenching one by one-metre road and reconstructing it afterwards," said Ashok Mistri, chief engineer of the Road Department. He added, "The main objective is to make the roads pothole-free. The life of CC [cement concrete] road is more than 50 years. The whole CC cover will add more life to pothole-free roads." There are around 40 types of utility cables under city roads.

Three grades of concrete will be used to build the roads. While M40 - full depth concrete - will be used on roads not wider than 13 metres, the narrower ones will be constructed by Altra Thin White Topping technique.

2,000
Combined length of city's roads