BHUBANESWAR: In a bid to improve road conditions, the State Government has decided to conduct a comprehensive study of rural roads and bring out a standard operating procedure for different types of roads.
The first-of-its-kind impact assessment study will evaluate implementation process of periodic maintenance, examine design faults, administrative bottlenecks and monitoring mechanism while designing an SOP for carrying out periodic maintenance works in future and suggest monitoring and evaluation framework.
The study will follow a stratified random sampling method and cover both process and impact evaluation of periodic maintenance work being undertaken for Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) as well as non-PMGSY roads in Odisha.
The selected sample roads must represent roads from different years and belong to different terrains. Apart from the cost-benefit analysis, the study will examine the impact of technology used for riding comfort and durability, efficiency of carrying out such maintenance work.
As per the Odisha Rural Roads Maintenance Policy, 2017, rural roads constitute a whopping 88 per cent (pc) of the entire road network covering 2,19,675 km in the State. Of this, PMGSY and non-PMGSY roads constitute 36,128 km.
While construction costs are shared between the Centre and the State since launch of PMGSY-II in 2013, the State has the full responsibility of funding the maintenance costs. The National Rural Roads Development Agency (NRRDA) has introduced a mechanism of integrated five-year maintenance of roads constructed or upgraded under PMGSY.
The study will cover 10,612.28 km of PMGSY roads and 2,856.65 km of non-PMGSY roads where periodic maintenance work was carried out in the last five years.
Rural Development department has spent around Rs 736 crore on periodic maintenance of 10,612.28 km of PMGSY roads between 2015-16 and 2018-19 and Rs 302.85 crore on maintenance of 2,856.65 km of non-PMGSY roads between 2017-18 and 2018-19.
An official said of 13,468.93 km of road maintained by RD department till March 31 this year, 1,000 km, including 800 km of PMGSY roads and 200 km of non-PMGSY, roads will be selected for the study.
“The process for selection of agencies for impact assessment study has been initiated. The assessment that is expected to start in February will be completed in six months,” he informed.
For cost-benefit analysis, at least 20 km of roads, 10 km each from PMGSY and non-PMGSY roads belonging to two different geographical terrains - plain and hilly - will be studied. Half of the samples collected will be tested in Government laboratory and the rest half will be tested in a private laboratory.
