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Trenching problem: Utility corridors only for new road projects

Trenching of city roads, many of which are freshly made, is one of the major factors that leads to crater-prone, uneven stretches, leading to their quality suffering despite the civic body spending crores every year for the same.

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The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has planned proper utility corridors for all its upcoming major road projects, such as the Goregaon-Mulund Link Road and the coastal road, to ensure that unnecessary trenching and digging up of the roads does not take place.

This means there will be prior planning of all the utilities belonging to the civic body as well as different private agencies, which will be running under certain areas allocated for the purpose. Utility providers include telecom service providers, power companies, gas agencies and other civic departments.

Trenching of city roads, many of which are freshly made, is one of the major factors that leads to crater-prone, uneven stretches, leading to their quality suffering despite the civic body spending crores every year for the same.

dna was the first to report how the newly made Marol Military Road was dug up by Reliance Jio to lay 4G cables without permissions that forced the BMC to file a police complaint against the agency.

Additional municipal commissioner SVR Srinivas, in-charge of roads, admitted the problem but explained that it is difficult to make a utility corridor on Mumbai's existing roads. With over 40 utilities running below the city's roads, the BMC is not aware which utility runs where. The civic body had recently completed mapping of sewer lines.

"To curb unnecessary trenching, we had come with the trenching policy where the contractor will be charged four times more for digging up a fresh road. The trenches tracking software is also operational, which is monitoring all the trenching work. We have also asked different utility companies to submit their plan for laying utilities across the year and they are responding," said Srinivas.

Sources, however, informed that the response has been poor so far.

About five years ago, the state-appointed Standing Technical Advisory Committee had recommended to the BMC to implement the duct system under footpaths to reduce road excavations, which damage the quality of roads.

Ducting is shifting dry and small utilities into an underground pipe so that utility agencies do not dig up long stretches of roads but only fixed slots.

With the complex network of utilities underneath the city's roads, the plan had failed to take off in the last few years. Hence, the BMC is considering utility corridors for the new projects.

This year, the BMC has given permission for trenching of roads up to 300km of the 1,950km road network in city. The roads department claimed that nearly 95% of the trenches have been reinstated so far.

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