BMC takes a 'rough' look at Mumbai's roads

Making it compulsory for road engineers to keep a check on roughness index of roads will help city have bump-free rides. Representation pic

A rule for the city's roads that otherwise existed only in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's (BMC) books will finally be implemented. The civic body's road engineers will now have to identify the roughness of the roads, as instructed by additional municipal commissioner (AMC) Vijay Singhal in a circular issued on Friday (mid-day has a copy).

The engineers will have to compile data of the roughness indices of all roads and get the tests done through competent consultants to ascertain whether or not repairs are required. The higher the amount of roughness, the worse the quality of the road.

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Necessary roughness

While the roads are randomly taken up for repair and reconstruction, which has also been pointed out by several citizens, the instructions issued on Friday state that the roughness index test results should be the basis for taking up repair jobs. Earlier, the tests were cumbersome; a tyre was used to gauge the roughness of the road by seeing the amount of asphalt or concrete that stuck to it.

Now there are machines available to make the job easier, according to the sources. Further, previously, if the entire road was smooth and passed the roughness test except for a small patch that seemed off, the civic body could only work on those patches, said BMC officials. The circular clearly states that the contractors should be held accountable to fulfil the conditions in their tender of carrying out roughness indices test six months before the defect liability period (DLP) of a newly constructed road ends. If this is not done, such contractors should be penalised, according to the circular.

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Bump-free rides

A senior civic official said, "As there was no checking by officials on whether or not the conditions of the tender were being seriously followed, this circular was sent out, making it mandatory for all contractors to submit the test results to the roads department, certifying the quality of the road constructed as approvable." He added, "We have also been asked to identify the roads that need to be checked for roughness index on a war footing and submit a list to the AMC's office so that a consultant can be appointed soon." mid-day tried to contact Singhal but he remained unavailable for comment.

16 August
Day the circular was issued

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