BHUBANESWAR: Whitetopping is the answer to potholed roads and crores of rupees spent for repair and restoration work of the roads every year, said Associate Professor (Civil) at School of Infrastructure in Indian Institute of Technology Dinakar Pasla on Wednesday.
The process in which pavement quality concrete (PQC) is overlayed on an existing bituminous pavement as an extra layer for its restoration increases the life-cycle of a road and reduces maintenance cost apart from addressing the issue of potholes, Pasla said at a programme on ‘Building pothole free roads in Indian cities’, organised by Indian Concrete Institute.
“The asphalt pavements usually get damaged during monsoon and require maintenance every year. Around Rs 40,000 crore is spent in the country every year from the exchequer for their repair and restoration. The issue can be addressed if a layer of PQC is placed on the asphalt pavement,” Pasla said. “This will give a sustainable solution that would last for at least 15 to 20 years and save thousands of crores spent every year on repairing roads and filling potholes,” he added.
The life-cycle cost of these roads are much less compared to roads surfaced with asphalt, said the IIT faculty, adding if the concrete layer is replaced with supplementary cementing materials such as fly ash generated from thermal power plants and slag from steel plants, this will reduce its cost further by 30 to 40 per cent.