HYDERABAD: There is hope that this monsoon would be different from the previous ones, as the GHMC has tied up with Ola to monitor potholes and fill them before the rains play havoc. The city’s west zone, living up to it’s ‘hitec’ tag, has taken the lead by using data from the cab aggregator and has found close to 200 potholes that need to be addressed at the earliest.
It may be recalled that in March, the Telangana government and Ola signed an MoU to asses the quality of roads and identify where traffic was slowing down due to infrastructure issues, and pass on this information to the departments concerned.
According to senior officials, Ola has conducted dynamic mapping of major roads in the area to assess their quality through its network of vehicles. Besides this, the Cyberabad traffic police have handed out a list of 57 places where water logging issues need to be fixed.
Several of these 57 places are in low-lying areas. Some have the problem aggravated by poor road engineering, like at Miyapur near HDFC Bank, where the road is lower than the culvert, and at PVNR pillar number 193, where the drainage is on the same level as the road.
Meanwhile, GHMC officials say they will complete the repairs within 10 days, ahead of the monsoon. “Ola has already submitted a list of close to 200 points where there are problems. We have also taken inputs from the traffic police to arrive at 300 road-damage spots and 15 major water-logging points, which will be attended to in the next 10 days,” said Harichandana Dasari, Zonal Commissioner of West Zone, GHMC.