Ghosts of roads past

CHENNAI: There are some advantages to being a city’s arterial road. It has the best of all trade down i t s length, it’s likely to be connected by several means of transport systems (particularly public systems) and — most importantly — it’s almost always on top of the renovation list. Just as much as it gets the attention, arterial roads receive the same amount of scrutiny too.

That is why, when the stretch of newlylaid road on Anna Nagar 2nd Avenue dissolved in the spell of unexpected rain early in January, it did not go unnoticed. The official word on the road’s condition is that there was no work done on that stretch in the recent past. “We’ve only recently milled the road. But we are yet to lay the road,” said an anonymous source from the regional office concerned.

The damage you saw was what was already there is the explanation. The statement does not come as a surprise to the average citizen, and social activists who have been fighting for better roads and safer conditions for years. “Now that the road has been damaged, this is — of course — what they would say,” says Shiva*, who commutes through Anna Nagar every day.

Hazardous roads
Even if we were to go by their account, that the roads have been milled and left unattended is reason enough to complain, says Jayaram Venkatesan, convenor of Arappor Iyakkam. “The milling is supposed to be succeeded by the laying of the road; it has to be done the same day or, at most, the next day. But, what they (officials) have done, to cut cost, is they have let the contractors do the milling of all roads at once. Now, many roads in the city have been milled but not laid.

This is a big traffic hazard. It’s been 25 days since Casa Major Road has been milled. Why allow the milling of the road when the roads cannot be laid (given that rain was expected all through Janua ry a s we l l ) , ” he questions. Meghanatha Reddy, deputy commissioner of works, categorically states that the Corporation does not do any road works, including milling, during the monsoon season. “The claim that we’ve laid roads in the past two months is factually wrong.

We have restarted the work now, after the spells were over. In fact, we waited for ten days more since the first week of January to see if the rains were really over,” he explains. Jayaram suggests that the reason the city continued to see some road works during December too, contradicting the ‘no work during monsoon’ rule, is the approaching elections. “They want to finish off this set of tenders before the next set can be floated. That’s why they are rushing it through,” he surmises. The case of the damaged-toosoon road is one that the city’s populace is quite familiar with. Every person who has stepped out of their house in the past couple of decades has borne witness to this routine.

That’s because there are too many holes in the process, says Kasimayan, traffic activist. “The reason the new roads break down is that they are laid over the damaged road; ideally, the damaged road should be removed before the new one is laid. Then, if they had allotted `100 for the new road, they would be spending only `40. The rest goes as commission to the politician and the officials and the contractor. Then, there is no way the road would be of quality,” he surmises. “Quality has been a big concern,” begins Jayaram. “Most of these roads are laid in the night, when the engineer is not there. You also can’t expect the engineer to be with the team during the day and night.

They say there’s a third-party consultant and they will take care of quality but that’s not happening. What we’re seeing is lack of quality of the tack coat. The tack coat is an emulsion that is spread across like a paste; this will hold the bottom layer with the top layer before the bitumen is laid. Now, if they dilute that emulsion, it will not hold the top layer. We are also not seeing adequate compression of the bitumen layer to make sure there’s no gap,” he details.

He points out that when the quality assessment team was made to work independently in 2015, they found that 85 per cent of the city roads did not meet the expected quality. “Today, there are no such officers who are there to take action. Most of these tenders (for road contracts), as we time and again say, are pre-fixed and there’s a lot of corruption in the way these tenders are awarded as well. As a result of which, there’s a nexus that exists between officials and politicians, and therefore, quality suffers,” he explains.

No place for grievance
Transparency and accountability at every step of the process is the only way out, suggests Kasimayan. “When a road is being laid, information such as who has been awarded the contract and how much money is being spent should be displayed. More importantly, there should be a system through which the public can easily raise complaints about damages to roads. If not for a separate tribunal, it can be brought under the ambit of the Traffic Police and allow people to file complaints with them.

They are the ones who know the different kinds of problems faced by the public in every part of the city. That’s why they can run this unit too, maybe with a set of volunteers and social activists. If such a system were present, the road contractor can be held accountable,” he elaborates. Right now, filing a complaint would start with finding out if the particular road falls under the purview of the Greater Chennai Corporation (then figure out which zone it falls under) or the Highway Department. When Kasimayan met with an accident on the Maduravayul road in November 2020 — his bike tripping over an open pit — he had to go through this rigamarole.

“My case was forwarded to the Thiruvallur office, and from there to the Highway Department. There has been no solution to it yet,” he adds. Besides, a tribunal can be set up to address the shortfalls of the contractor — in case the road suffers damage within a short period of time, if there’s reason to question the quality of work of a given contractor, or if there is need to bar a particular contractor from participating in future works due to his work history, he suggests. The Corporation official states that they have a mechanism to keep a tab on the contractors involved.

“If the quality of the road is bad, we issue a notice. Then, we send them a show-cause notice, asking them to explain the shortfall. For, the error could have happened on anyone’s side — be it unexpected rain during the construction or leakage of sewage water. We give them the chance to correct it. If the notice is not addressed, we’d find a different contractor to rectify the damage and double the charges on the first contractor. Sometimes, we even have them blacklisted,” he explains.

However, Meghanatha Reddy and the Corporation official both state that there’s no way a newly laid road is damaged within a few months. Elaborating, the corporation official says, “Unless there’s a specific problem like a leaking water pipe or the road being dug up for other works, any new road should last for at least three years, if not five.” In case people want to complain, they can always reach out to the corporation or highway department and find out which is the department concerned; once they have that information, the complaint can be easily escalated from there, he assures. By Friday, parts of Anna Nagar 2nd Avenue Road have been laid afresh. Soon enough, the potholes in the exit road by the Porur toll would be filled too. We’ll just have to wait for the next spell of rain, I suppose.

Look out!
Parts of Pantheon Road, a large stretch of Arcot Road (from Alwarthirunagar to AVM studios in Vadapalani) are just some examples of this ever-persistent pattern.

FIling complaints
Filing a complaint would start with finding out if the particular road falls under the purview of the  Greater Chennai Corporation or the Highway Department. When Kasimayan met with an accident on the Maduravayul road in November 2020, he had to go through this rigamarole.