Incessant rains during the southwest monsoon till October-end and Cyclone Nivar left the national highways and State highways damaged, requiring a lot of maintenance, but what one observes on National Highway No.44 when one drives down from Bengaluru or Hyderabad is the stark difference in the regular maintenance of the stretch between Dhone in Kurnool district to Kodikonda on Andhra Pradesh-Karnataka border.
A day-long survey of this stretch of NH 44 by Anantapur Deputy Transport Commissioner N. Sivaram Prasad along with The Hindu team brought out spots of utter neglect shown by the contractor and the National Highways authorities. For a common traveller in a personal vehicle from Bengaluru to Hyderabad or in the opposite direction the contrast in road conditions between Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka is very obvious and officials believe accidents are waiting to happen on this stretch.
Heavy traffic
On an average 8,000 vehicles of all types travel in both directions on NH 44 between Kodikonda and Gooty, while this number goes up by another 2,000 on weekends, according to the estimates of the toll collecting agencies. Nearly 2,000 of them are two-wheelers and three-wheelers that do not pay any tax.
With such heavy traffic, the NHAI Anantapur division has been struggling to maintain the stretch from Kurnool to Kodikonda with the concessionaire’s contract terminated close to a decade ago. The NHAI Project Director Jeevan Lal Meena tells The Hindu that they are getting potholes repaired, while bush clearance and all other kinds of maintenance work has been done at a cost of ₹54 lakh.
Slow work
The work started about two months ago, but the pace is abysmally slow and no jungle clearance has been done after the heavy vegetative growth during the monsoon. Even potholes at many places looked dangerous, like for example the stretch at C.K. Palli entrance/diversion while coming from Bengaluru side and at Ammuvarapalli cross near KIA Motors India factory.
Anantapur Roads and Buildings Superintending Engineer R. Nagaraju says that the damage to the R&B roads in the district was relatively low with an estimated ₹10 crore needed for patchwork or minor repairs and no major damage was there even during Cyclone Nivar. Two to three places in Kadiri and Kondapuram were the worst affected, but work has begun there for temporary restoration.
Fencing damaged
Signages are missing at most places and many of the surviving ones have been damaged and 174 blinkers are missing, either stolen or damaged in accidents. Steel fencing at most habitations has been cut and taken away or has not been replaced after damage during an accident.
Either traffic islands or flyovers are essential at KIA Motors India factory junction at Erramanchi and at Rapthadu Junction, from where a new national highway diversion for Chennai has been constructed.
Mr. Sivaram Prasad feels some interim arrangement needs to be done to reduce accidents.
In the current year, there were 847 accidents till October-end and of them 442 involved two-wheelers and 160 pedestrians were injured or suffered fatalities in Anantapur district.
