BENGALURU : It has been a long and tiring year for commuters who regularly use the stretch between Mekhri Circle and Professor CNR Rao circle for their daily travel. The 6.2 km stretch was a smooth ride, taking barely a few minutes to cover up until last year, when the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) started white-topping the road. Today, it takes almost 30 minutes to cover the 1 km stretch between Mekhri Circle and the junction to New BEL Road.
"The road had been dug up near the JN Tata Auditorium a few years back for widening. That project caused several traffic jams, as one part of the road was taken over with construction debris. Now, just a few years later, we are back to the same situation and it has become impossible to travel on this stretch without getting stuck in a traffic jam," said N Mahesh, resident of Mathikere.
According to residents and experts, whitetopping on this road - which was one of many that was marked for white topping this October - was a bad decision. “The road was wide enough and it was relatively well maintained. It was a bad decision to take up white topping here,” said professor, Ashish Verma, who uses this stretch to reach the IISc campus.
Explaining the rationale behind choosing to take up whitetopping on a road, Ashish said that more care should have gone into the selection. “Repeated damage to the road as well as traffic density are only some of the factors. There are several advantages and disadvantages to white-topped roads, as compared to bituminous roads. In this case, it was unwarranted,” he said.
Meanwhile, the BBMP, which was supposed to complete the white-topping of 30 arterial roads stretching 94 km, by August this year, has overshot its initial target. KT Nagaraj, chief engineer, Major Roads for the BBMP, said, “The curing of the white-topped concrete is a process which takes the longest time. Since this has to be done in stretches, there are days where work accumulates. These cannot be termed as delays in the project, but they do add to the final time taken for completion.”
Nagaraj further explained that the white-topped roads would have to incorporate ducts and space for pipelines and other wires of utilities, so that digging at a later date could be avoided. "We are working at full speed. However, a completion time cannot be given for individual roads," he said. Residents await the completion of the project. “Traffic jams will occur for major projects. But if it is worth the results, I believe we should welcome the project and hope that no further digging will occur once the white-topped road is completed,” said Geetha, a member of the Sanjaynagar RWA.