Unseasonal rain that has been lashing Mumbai for over a week has affected the ongoing road concretising works with civic officials saying that though the work has not been stopped, it has been divided into sections, leading to slowing down of the process.
“The overall process of concretising is done in three stages — excavation, filling the excavated portion with dry-lean concrete (DLC), and finally matching up the surface of the road with pavement quality concrete (PQC) and later leaving it for a curing period,” Abhijit Bangar, additional municipal commissioner (Projects), told The Indian Express.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) initiated the road concretising work in October. Every year, due to the monsoon season, civil and construction works are halted between June and September. The works gradually resume soon after the official withdrawal of monsoon is announced. This time, even after the monsoon withdrawal was announced, unseasonal rain continued in the city.
“During rain, we can’t pour concrete on excavated roads. Neither can we leave freshly laid concrete for curing or excavate new roads. Hence there has been a delay. However, we are hopeful that the delay is only for the time being and overall it is not going to impact the target set for next year,” Bangar said.
Ahead of monsoon, the BMC had dug up 525 kilometres of roads in Mumbai that accounted to 25 per ent of the city’s total road length of 2,050 kilometres.
According to civic officials, from October, the BMC started concretising of 1,350 roads with a total length of 365.44 km, divided into two categories. In the first category, 574 roads with a length of 156.74 km will be taken up.
In total, the BMC has earmarked a budget of `17,733 crore to concretise 700 kilometres of roads in Mumbai.
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“Our target for the completion of road concretising was May 31, however, due to early advancement of the monsoon season, we couldn’t meet it and the roads that were dug up during that time were temporarily asphalted. Now that the rains are over, these roads will be taken up for concretising on priority,” said an official.
The work order for concretising 700 km of roads was issued in two phases — 700 roads with an approximate length of 324 km in the first phase adn 1,421 with a length of 377 km in the second phase.
Overall, the progress of work stands at 49 per cent, with 64 per cent of the roads taken up in the first step completed, followed by 37 per cent of the roads that were taken up in the second phase.
The road project was announced in 2022 by Eknath Shinde when he was the chief minister. Shinde had announced that the entire project would be completed by early 2025.
