Potholes on roads, gaping holes in your pocket

It is said that every dark cloud has a silver lining… Similarly every pothole in the city is lined with money. No, not for you the motorist but for the car mechanics operating along Mumbai’s 300km length of roads. “It’s like the authorities and politicians feel guilty about the crores from the corruption in road repair contracts they make and have decided to distribute a few lakhs among the mechanics,” pointed out Padma Nair, a resident of Khar who has stopped driving after the car broke down twice due to monster potholes.

“Driving doesn’t end your commuting woes… with roads like these it just multiplies them,” she says as she hops into an auto. With a number of vehicles stuck on roads everyday till the driver finds a garage or service centre, this only adds to the already huge bottleneck that  traffic in Mumbai has become.

Recently Bhargav Ganti, who runs a consultancy company, had to spend Rs5000 on car repairs due to a big pothole on the Mulund flyover. “In the first week of September, I was moving ahead with my car towards the office from my Thane residence. It was drizzling in the morning and I was doing around 70kmph when suddenly the tyre of the car got into a pothole. I felt a big jerk and then couldn’t move at all. I called a mechanic who took the car to his service centre. Later he gave me a bill of Rs 4,500 by saying the front suspension and shock absorbers were totally damaged. Now, though I drive slowly, I still keep having problems with my car only due to the bad roads of Mumbai,” said Ganti. 

Aarey colony resident Kaushik Dedhia should agree. Maintenance charges for his brother-in-law’s car have increased this monsoon.

Earlier they were spending Rs5,000 every six months, but now they exhaust over Rs5000 within a month! “While thankfully there has been no serious damage to the car; there are various things like loosening of the door, damage to shock absorbers and bumper damage  that occurs ever now and then. Moreover, as we spend more time on the road and car has to run in lower gear it consumes more fuel. This also ends up increasing costs,” said Dedhia.

Expert view
Use infotech solutions to resolve the problem
Lot of geographic information systems (GIS) are available through which you can classify potholes, say, on a scale of five, depending on how deep and wide the pothole is(essentially, it’s cubic area). This way you can keep a good mathematical accounting of potholes; what is its cubic area, who filled it how much the last time, what was the expenditure, etc. Presently, there is no systematic way of accounting for potholes and there is a need to bring them under serious accounting as the problem is really severe. We should employ information technology for a good physical accounting system in the interest of transparency. A lot of cities in the US use software designed by Indians to make accounts of their potholes. I wouldn’t like to name the software as I am not interested in advertising on their behalf; but, the point is, that there are enough IT solutions to account for the problem.
— Ashok Datar, traffic management expert

Sena filling coffers, not potholes
Every year we have to spend Rs2,000-2,500 per taxi due to bad roads since  potholes not only damage the tyres, but also the suspension, the axles and in some case the chassis. When 
political parties feel that they can target us and give us orders to do as they want, shouldn’t they be setting their own houses in order?

The Sena never holds back when it comes to attacking  cabbies at the drop of a hat, but what are they doing sitting in power? Look at the condition of the roads. Instead of filling potholes, looks like they are busy filling their own pockets.

The CM was also toeing the Sena line on cabbies till he got pulled up. His minister, instead of addressing real issues like the problem of permits, is busy deciding whether taxis should be beige or peach.

The MMRDA is under the sate government and should have attended to roads. But they seem least interested.
— A L Quadros, president, taxi-union