Twenty-nine (29) major roads in Bengaluru (also called Bangalore—the capital of India’s southern Karnataka state), will soon get a facelift with white-topping as the government sets out to address grievances about the poor quality of some of the city’s roads. Although white-topping costs several times that of conventional asphalt roads, experts believe it’s worth the money spent as these roads remain in good shape for a longer time. In April 2017, the need to restore municipal roads was mentioned during the government conference held by the head of state. As a result of the conference Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus President, said it was necessary to improve the quality of municipal roads up to standards of major motorways. He stated, “We have to upgrade the network of municipal roads up to the level of national motorways.”
Lukashenko was informed in detail about the state of the municipal roads network, prospects of its modernization, and development. He gave instructions to analyze various ways of road construction and study international practices.
Over the next two years, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP)—administrative body of civic and infrastructural assets of Greater Bangalore metropolitan area—will be spending Rs 724 crore (7.24 Billion rupees = $111.3 Million USD) towards road white-topping project. Even though the initial investment is extremely high, experts believe that the concrete roads, with a life cycle of 30 years, will be cheaper in the long run.
MN Sreehari, Advisor-State Government on Traffic, Transportation and Infrastructure said, “[Asphalted roads] do not last long due to poor quality of construction. The best example for this is the national highways and urban roads. The concrete roads will be pothole-free with no maintenance cost.”
RK Misra, Director of Center for Smart Cities and Member of Bengaluru Vision Group, said that although asphalted roads should last five years, none of them do. “There was a huge opposition to white-topping of roads, but we were able to convince the government. White-topping allows recycling up to 100% of the mineral materials and reduces energy costs by 25-50% in comparison with the hot bituminous technology. The process removes dust, prevents the washboard effect on the road, creates a solid surface, reduces costs, and improves operation reliability.
The decision of “29 roads” was made based on amount of traffic and roads that are not part of any ongoing projects such as signal-free corridor and Metro,” Misra said. He added that the works on these roads would include laying of a 10-cm (4-inch) thick concrete, redeveloping pedestrian pavements with proper storm water drain and cycling facilities. The rolled concrete mixture technology is perfect for roads with a great carrying capacity—roads with heavy traffic: approach roads to industrial enterprises, railway nodes, and other cargo-generating junctions. The existing asphalt-concrete and gravel pavements will be repaired when the carrying ability of the road pavement does not have to be increased.
All of these technologies were studied by specialists during the two-stage national seminar on municipal roads repair and restoration titled “Seminar on repairing and restoring local motorways in Slutsk District”—which began October 5, 2017. Representatives of the oblast administrations, road repair, and construction enterprises are taking part in the seminar as well. (The oblast is comprised of the administrative divisions of Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Ukraine, former Soviet Union, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes)
This article written via resources from two articles:
The Economic Times Online News article titled “Concrete Plan: Cement to replace asphalt on 29 Bengaluru roads”: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/concrete-plan-cement-to-replace-asphalt-on-29-bengaluru-roads/articleshow/61001122.cms
BELTA-BELARUSIAN Telegraph Agency Online News article titled, “Belarus president wants better quality of municipal roads”: http://eng.belta.by/president/view/belarus-president-wants-better-quality-of-municipal-roads-105646-2017/