KMC to get five milling machines to fix undulated road surfaces

Kolkata: In a bid to fix undulated road surfaces in the city, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has decided to procure five road milling machines at a cost of Rs 9.83 crore approximately.

According to KMC, roads under jurisdiction of KMC have undulation in major sections. This not only has led to causing discomfort of vehicle riders but also is causing stagnation of storm water which enters houses on ground floor since the base level is reduced from road heights. To rectify such problems, the civic body has decided to lower the road height and smoothen the road surface.

At present the roads department has four milling machines which are insufficient to meet the crisis. The department placed a detailed project report to the Urban Development and Municipal Affairs (UD&MA) department for procuring five milling machines. Such DPR was sanctioned by the state government. The cost is estimated to be around Rs 98375000.

It was learnt that some of stretches of major roads which will be taken up for levelling the undulated surfaces include Rashbehari Avenue, Sarat Bose Road (Western flank), Gurusaday Dutta Road, Gariahat Road, Vivekananda Road, Chittaranjan Avenue, Bentinck Street, Ripon Street, BB Ganguly Street, Baker Road (Alipore) and Roy Bahadur Road (Behala). Sources said such a decision was taken following a barrage of complaints from the motorists. Such undulated surfaces pave the way for accident risks. A KMC roads department official said that such undulations are also because of frequent digging of roads due to utility works. Once such work is over, the levelling is hardly done. Cold milling needs to be done before any repairing work.

The civic body plans to complete at least an extent of the work prior to next monsoon since rains make it near impossible to carry out any road-related work.

On stretches where water supply pipeline work is afoot, the civic body needs to wait to execute the surface levelling works there.