After a day’s toil, thirty-year-old sales executive B. Ramesh needed all his driving skills to safely reach home in Balaram colony as the roads en route are full of potholes in the city, which competed for Smart City status.
This is the experience of almost all motorists here, who can hardly find even a small stretch of road without bumps and potholes in the 420 km network of roads in the ever-expanding city where the Chennai-Kolkata highway and Ongole-Kurnool road criss-cross.
A visit by The Hindu team covering, among other areas, Mangamoor Donka, Pragati Colony, Kesavarajakunta, Santhapeta and Indiramma Colony reveals bad roads are a perennial problem for the public, which gets compounded during the rainy season, and motorcyclists skidding and falling from their bikes is a common sight.
A motorable stretch is hard to find on many roads, especially on the city outskirts, observes an autorickshaw driver Anjaneyulu after a back-breaking drive on the Ongole-Cheruvukommapalem road, the division represented by Ongole Mayor Gangada Sujatha.
Unscientific speed breakers
Making the matters worse, people put up on their own speed breakers in an unscientific manner making the drive more difficult in the city with 170 km of cement concrete roads.
“I carry spare clothes with me while going to school,” says a school teacher K. Srinivasa Rao living in the Housing Board colony area dotted with many potholes.
“I have to replace the tyres of my car frequently as they get worn out in no time,” complains Forum for Good Governance past president S. Saibabu after his vehicle gets trapped in a crater on the Santhapeta first street.
The cash-strapped civic body prioritises road works focussing on arterial roads first and then interior roads and suburban stretches, says Ms. Sujatha.
None of the contractors is ready to take up road laying works in the city, including the north bypass road, as old bills to the tune of ₹10 crore had not been cleared yet. There is also delay in getting Central funds under the Smart City project, according to sources in the civic body.
As a result except for minor patch work no major road repair works are being taken up in the city, observes Ongole Town Development Committee president Marella Subba Rao.
