BMC to shift all underground utilities into ducts

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Monday took the first step to avoid frequent digging of roads in the city by deciding to shift the myriad underground utilities below the 2,000-km road network into underground ducts. The civic body plans to appoint three consultants to undertake the preliminary exercise of mapping the existing utilities, preparing designs and drawings for trench-free pavements with utility ducts, and preparing estimates of the project.

The BMC has issued an expression of interest bid for appointing consultants for three years on Monday. According to the BMC, there are nearly 36 different utility agencies including sewage, drinking water and telephone that lay their utility lines, pipes and cables under BMC roads.

The BMC’s decision to have underground ducts for utilities has come after civic chief Praveen Pardeshi in August had sought a sustainable solution to prevent potholes while also ensuring access to utilities. The BMC had then decided to have the utilities mapped.

“During the ongoing Metro construction work in the city, when often had no updated information on the underground utilities below [the roads], due to which these utilities were damaged at times. This includes sewage pipeline or drinking water pipeline,” said a senior civic official, who did not want to be named. He added that to lay new utilities and repair faults, the roads had to often be excavated, leading to the damages to the footpaths and carriageways, and causing inconvenience to the public. “Therefore, to get a complete engineering solution for this perpetual trenching problem, the BMC has decided to provide dedicated utility ducts,” the official said.

The three different consultants will suggest the priority locations where the mapping of utilities can be done on a pilot basis.

Recently, the BMC had also asked its roads department to use paver blocks near footpaths as repeatedly digging roads for utility-related work and re-layering them with cement or tar becomes a costly affair. However, the move of using paver blocks has been opposed by citizens and civic activists.

Taha Sayed, a Mazgaon resident, said, “If the BMC is planning to have underground ducts for utilities why is it using paver blocks in that case for side lanes? It should stop using these paver blocks even on the side lanes considering the placement of paver blocks always get uneven resulting in discomfort to pedestrians.”