Potholes, bad roads bring back monsoon woes on key stretches in Delhi
PWD officials said that work is going on along many areas where potholes, footpaths, kerbs, etc., were being repaired.
Broken footpaths along the main road of Mehrauli that cannot be crossed on foot if it rains; crater-sized gaps on the Noida link road; uneven and broken patches all over Rani Jhansi road near Karol Bagh; and construction waste on streets in Greater Kailash the makes the journey a bumpy ride — this is the state of several stretches across the city as monsoon rains have begun the Capital, making potholes even harder than usual to navigate.
Residents from different parts of Delhi complained this week that many of these roads have remained in disrepair for several weeks, and commuters said that water-logging near potholes adds to their travel time and raises safety concerns.
“The stretch from Savitri cinema to Alaknanda market can be renamed ‘pothole stretch’. The problem has increased in the last six months due to construction activities, and several localities that fall along this road are affected because of rain,” said Chetan Sharma, founder general secretary of Confederation of RWAs and chairman of GK II complex RWAs. He added that several letters have been written to PWD by the RWAs in the past few months, but there has been little action.
On Friday, a 51-year-old auto-rickshaw driver drowned in a pit filled with rainwater near an under-construction flyover in north-east Delhi’s Harsh Vihar after his three-wheeler got stuck in it. The pit was created due to flyover construction work.
Sanjeev Kapoor of Karol Bagh Traders’ Association said, “The roads around Karol Bagh are in a bad condition because of potholes. During monsoon, the situation has definitely worsened leading to traffic congestion. Officials also do not make any efforts to repair the damage.”
For Pradeep Talwar, a resident of north Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar, the situation is no different. “The condition was bad but now it is worse. Mukherjee Nagar is congested as it is; now it takes 20 minutes for me to reach the main road.”
In Vasant Kunj, Nelson Mandela Marg is being revamped as part of a streetscaping project to bring the stretch up to the European standards. But some other parts of this residential area has poor internal roads.
“Roads along Vasant Kunj are in bad shape and need urgent infrastructure upgrade -- rather than beautification projects -- because of which there are jams across parts of Nelson Mandela Road, Aruna Asaf Ali Marg and Mehrauli-Mahipalpur road,” said A K Mehta, president of Vasant Kunj RWA.
“There are narrow lanes in Laxmi Nagar and the area is almost always choked after it rains as there is no drainage. The construction work for the Delhi-Saharanpur highway has worsened the comdition,” said Anand Jha from Laxmi Nagar.
A recent report by Air Pollution Action Group (A-PAG), a non-profit that prepared the report along with the Municipal Council of Delhi (MCD), mentioned that a programme to identify pollution sources across the Capital unearthed more than 94,000 distinct or point-sources of dust pollution between November 2021 and June 2023, with the most common being over 30,000 potholes found in the city. Most of these were in the form of complaints on the 311 app of MCD.
After follow-ups with various departments including PWD, MCD and DDA, it was found that over 25,000 of these have been repaired now, mostly during the pre-monsoon preparations during June.
PWD officials said that work is going on along many areas where potholes, footpaths, kerbs, central verge and drainage covers are being repaired.
“The complaints team works on resolving any such issues immediately. There are hardly any large potholes along our road stretches. However, some trenches along construction sites are being demarcated now so that people and vehicles stay away from it. These can only be filled after construction in those areas is complete,” said a PWD official, asking not to be named.
MCD spokespeople did not respond. However, an MCD official aware of the matter said that the civic body carries out repair on the basis of complaints received on multiple helplines and the field inspection reports prepared by the junior engineers.
Experts said that the problem often gets exacerbated as the technology for repairs has not evolved with the times, and workers usually fill up the potholes with any material lying close to the location, or by covering them with a coal tar layer or concrete mix.
“Improper de-silting is directly linked to this problem that leads to water accumulation and increased contact time of water with bitumen. Water is the main enemy of bituminous roads. Second, most of our roads are poorly maintained that lead to changes in the slope and profile leading to water accumulation. Also, overhead Metro and flyover drains often fall directly on the roads,” S Velmurugan, chief scientist and head, traffic engineering and safety division, Central Road Research Institute (CRRI).