After Grap curbs, cold and elections to delay repair of Delhi roads

With the state assembly elections slated early next year—in the run-up to which enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) will again halt such activities—officials said it was unlikely that the repairs would be completed by next February

New Delhi

Repair work undertaken at Safdarjung flyover during the start of the initiative in October. (RAJ K RAJ /HT PHOTO)

Road repairs of arterial roads started by the Public Works Department (PWD) in October but halted later due to Graded Response Action Plan (Grap) curbs are currently faced with the obstacle of “cold weather”, officials said. With the state assembly elections slated early next year—in the run-up to which enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) will again halt such activities—officials said it was unlikely that the repairs would be completed by next February.

Officials cited the example of an unsuccessful repair attempt from the past week. Last Wednesday, PWD attempted to repair three patches on the Outer Ring Road, near Savitri Flyover and Chirag Delhi, but the repaired section did not settle and peeled off due to low temperature. The department was later forced to deploy “groomer machines” to scrape off the layer.

A senior PWD official, not wishing to be named, said peak winter was not suitable for patchwork and road re-carpeting, as low temperature leads to fast cooling of hot bituminous mixture that is used for repair. Despite 90% of repairs of 1,400 kilometres of roads—set an October-end target by the Delhi government—work is unlikely to be completed shortly. PWD is the caretaker of around 1,400km of roads wider than 60 metres, including 100 flyovers.

“Very low temperatures are an obstacle in the adhesion between underlying road surface and bitumen, leading to weaker road surfaces, which gets easily damaged. The moisture from fog and mist also affects the binding process,” the official said.

Stages 3 and 4 of Grap were enforced in the Capital from November 15 to December 5 as air quality rapidly deteriorated—a winter phenomenon in the region due to increasing pollution and unfavourable meteorological conditions—halting repairs. On Monday, Stage 3 of Grap was invoked again in Delhi, under which machinery that are not BS-6 compliant are banned.

Cold wave conditions were observed in parts of the Capital for a second consecutive day on Monday as the mercury dropped further in the past 24 hours. Safdarjung, representative of Delhi’s weather, recorded a minimum temperature of 4.5°C, four degrees below normal for this time of the year and the joint lowest minimum this season. IMD forecasted the minimum temperature to hover around 5-7°C over the next week, with a “yellow” alert in place for Tuesday and Wednesday.

A second PWD official said that work may only resume next February. “We cannot undertake strengthening or blacktopping work as low temperatures are not allowing proper curing, leaving the top layer weak. Work may again resume around February,” the official said.

“Infrastructure work is allowed during (first three stages of) Grap, but we need to use heavy machinery and vehicles like road rollers, none of which are BS-6 compliant. So, contractors had no option but to completely stop work,” the second PWD official said.

According to a presentation made by PWD to the Delhi government, 253,000 square metres of patchwork needed to be done and 6,671 potholes needed to be fixed, of which most potholes have now been filled in and only around 25,000sqm of patchwork was remaining.

Officials said that besides repairs, road strengthening is needed to be done on the Outer Ring Road, stretch from Okhla flyover to Chirag Dilli, Mehrauli-Mahipalpur Road, ITO from Delhi Secretariat road, and the Hyatt flyover, among others.