Pothole work to be prioritised on basis of traffic impact: BMC

The civic body has been copping flak for traffic jams caused by potholes on busy roads. To resolve the issue, the BMC plans to categorise all potholes that have been reported as severe, medium and low priority. Alok Deshpande reports.

The civic body has been copping flak for traffic jams caused by potholes on busy roads. To resolve the issue, the BMC plans to categorise all potholes that have been reported as severe, medium and low priority. The prioritisation will depend upon the traffic density of the road on which the pothole exists.

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"[The prioritisation] is to ensure potholes on busy roads are filled at the earliest. We proposed this to avoid traffic jams on busy roads," said LS Vhatkar, director, engineering and services (project) of civic body. "We will try to fill such potholes in less than 24 hours, so that traffic will not be affected."

High priority potholes notwithstanding, those with medium and low priority, which lie on less busy roads, will have to be filled in less than 48 hours, Vhatkar clarified.

Shantanu Kulkarni of Probity Soft, the software company providing the online pothole tracking system, said, "We are working on this enhancement in the software and will get activated once it gets nod from the higher authorities."

Meanwhile, the number of overdue potholes in the city has reached 688, and the total fine levied on contractors has crossed Rs 1.52 crore. As per data available with Hindustan Times, 373 potholes have not been attended to by the contractors within the stipulated period , and 258 potholes are overdue and lying in the defect liability period. Around 57 potholes have not been attended at all, by engineers or by contractors.