The Hindu : Karnataka / Mangalore News : Mangalore roads are motorists' nightmare

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jul 19, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka - Mangalore

Mangalore roads are motorists' nightmare

By M. Raghuram

MANGALORE, JULY 18. After enjoying hassle-free driving for two years, motorists in the city now have to contend with bad roads. Thanks to the poor maintenance of infrastructure by the authorities concerned, pothole-riddled roads have become the order of the day.

The Karnataka High Court directed the council of the Mangalore City Corporation in 2001 to maintain the roads in good condition.

The corporation, on its part, took steps in this regard and for sometime, the roads were a pleasure to ride on.

Surprisingly, the corporation spent the least amount of money on road maintenance in 2001-02 and 2002-03, and according to the budget proposals of the corporation for the two years, the allocation for road maintenance accounted to less than two per cent of the Rs. 60-crore budget.

Previously, the sum allocated for road maintenance was five per cent to six per cent of the budget estimate.

According to the engineering division of the corporation, this decrease in the outlay for road maintenance in the past two years was because of paver-finished roads.

The engineers say that paver-finished roads are worth their bitumen as they last a little more than two years under conditions such as the incessant rainfall in Dakshina Kannada. They even note that all the roads are not in a bad condition and some of the arterial roads are intact and might last for another year.

However, many interior roads leading to various residential areas and business centres such as Azizuddin Road (partially concreted), Bibi Alabi Road at Bunder (partially concreted), the stretch between Jyothi Circle and Bunts' Hostel Circle, the road from Lady Hill Circle to Urva Stores, and others are in a poor state.

Some narrow roads such as Car Street Road, the stretch from Ashok Nagar to Urva Stores, and roads in Capitanio, Sooterpet, Urva, Matadakani, Kodialguthu, Kodialbail, and other places are in need of urgent repair.

Though it is true that the corporation is making efforts to concrete all the roads, it appears to be a distant dream as it requires a huge sum of money, says the Mayor, Purandaradasa Kulur.

However, Mr. Kulur is hopeful that with the Asian Development Bank releasing a loan through the Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation, at least those stretches in the old Mangalore City Municipality area will be concreted within two years.

He told The Hindu that to begin with, the stretch between Lady Hill and Urva Stores would be concreted and work in this regard would begin on August 26.

When this stretch would be concreted, the city would have five km of concreted road from Kottara Chowki to the Bunts' Hostel, which in itself was an achievement of the corporation, he added.

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