Asphalt plants told to work on weekends

MUMBAI: Under immense pressure to fix the city's potholed roads and quickly, the civic body has urged private asphalt plant owners across the city to keep their businesses open even on weekends. Asphalt goes into a premix that is used to make roads and fill craters.

"We need a constant supply of the material, particularly during monsoon. We have asked owners to keep their plants open on weekends so that our work does not suffer," said a senior official from the civic roads department.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) owns an asphalt plant in Worli, but it alone cannot meet the city's enormous needs. There are as many as 13 recognized private drum-mix plants and three batch-mix plants, all of which are outside city limits. They have a capacity to generate 100 metric tonnes of asphalt per hour.

The civic body uses hot and cold mixes to fix potholes. It claims to have already used 1,943.73 tonnes of bituminous macadam hot mix this year to repair craters spread across 1,370.8 km of roads. The remainder of the roads the BMC oversees are concretised. The hot mix was used during June and three weeks of July.

Since long, experts have recommended batch-mix asphalt plants over drum-mix plants, which mix coarse bitumen and metal aggregates on the basis of volume and not weight. The batch-mix technology is normally recognized as better because it guarantees proportionate and high quality volume of mix.

BMC data shows that since 2007 it has spent more than Rs 212 crore to fix potholes during the four monsoon months. However, despite trying both the traditional hot mix and cold mix methods, the civic body has been unable to ensure that contractors fix potholes in such a way that they do not recur. State PWD officials say they spend Rs 60 lakh a year to repair potholes on the eastern and western express highways.

(IndiaTimes)

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Motorists, beware of paver blocks used to 'fix' potholes

MUMBAI: Fixing potholes with paver blocks appears to be latest trend this monsoon, though experts rue that the practice defies engineering logic. Paver blocks come loose within two-three days, ensuring motorists a nightmarish ride, especially so during peak hours, they say.

These potholes resurface within a few days of the "damage-control exercise" as asphalt, concrete and paver blocks do not hold during rains.

An independent expert who works closely with the government said, "Paver blocks are a makeshift arrangement during heavy showers. Only if the repair team maintains them every other day, can this temporary arrangement work. If they come loose, mishaps are likely; they are even more dangerous for bikers." The one benefit, he said, is that paver blocks help stop a pothole from widening.

While a senior technocrat with the public works department (PWD) admitted that this method of fixing potholes may be illogical, he added that paver blocks are being chosen as a temporary measure in the "absence of an alternative".

TOI observed fixing of a pothole with paver blocks on Chheda Nagar flyover on Monday (see pic). This spot is maintained by Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC)'s contractor, Mumbai Entry Point Toll Ltd (MEP).

MEP chief executive officer Kiran Pangaonkar called this a temporary measure and assured that "as soon as we have a dry spell, we will fill all these potholes with bitumen and a proper hot mix by removing the paver blocks".

A senior MSRDC official defended the use of paver blocks by saying that the other cement-based fixing materials currently in the market are not cost-effective. The cost of fixing potholes with these materials would be equal to re-carpeting a major stretch of a road, he said.

"We think concretizing all roads and maintaining flyovers properly with high-quality asphalt are the only solutions. Government firms cannot afford new technology and materials to fix potholes."

(IndiaTimes)

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