MUMBAI: CM Eknath Shinde on Saturday evening held a meeting with civic road department officials about making Mumbai roads pothole-free in the next two years. He said all roads will be concretised in the next two years. This comes on a day after BMC experimented with various pothole-filling solutions to address the crater issue. BMC said two solutions - use of geo polymer concrete technology and rapid hardening concrete method - have yielded desired result.
Civic sources said the CM's decision to concretise roads assumes significance against the backdrop of general elections and legislative polls scheduled to be held in 2024.
BMC officials said laying of cement concrete roads is being done on 236 km of roads in the city while another stretch of 400 km is proposed to be concretised. The total cost of repairing 400 km of roads is estimated to be Rs 4,900 crore.
At the meeting, Shinde directed BMC to ensure that potholes on Mumbai's roads caused by heavy rainfall are repaired on a priority basis.
During the presentation made to the chief minister, the municipal commissioner said that the latest tenders for road works have a clause to construct soak pits at regular intervals on newly made roads, so rainwater does not accumulate on roads.
Shinde told the media, "We have chalked out a programme to make Mumbai pothole-free in the next two years. In the next two years all Mumbai roads will be concretised. Ducts would also be constructed along the median and also side of the roads so that rain water can flow away through it. This will ensure that the water level of the road is maintained and all water does not flow and go into the sea."
Shinde also said that each year the BMC has been making use of cold mix which comes out, causing bikers to slip and it has been decided that potholes would be filled with advanced geo polymer techniques and rapid setting concrete."This would ensure that Ganpati mandals would not be hassled due to these potholes the BMC chief IS Chahal has assured me," said Shinde also adding that paver blocks would also be used to fill potholes to ensure these craters do not resurface.
Civic officials said that there would be CCTV network along these roads to be repaired to be continuously monitoring the quality of work being done.
As for the two techniques used to fill potholes,Ulhas Mahale, deputy municipal commissioner (infrastructure) said while they were making use of paver blocks at pothole-filling sites, the two others used have given good result. On Friday a road below Eastern Freeway was selected to fill potholes.
