HT Monsoon Audit: Bad road repairs and Metro work in Mumbai to make your ride bumpy

Are city roads prepared to brave the monsoon onslaught? Not quite.

This is the verdict of a four-member HT panel who examined five arterial roads — Babasaheb Ambedkar link road, Sion-Mahim link road, Ghatkopar-Mankhurd link road, SV link road and Andheri-Kurla link road — on June 2. The exercise is part of HT’s monsoon audit. Over the past two days, HT reported how ill-equipped Mumbai’s stormwater drains are to prevent flooding. The audited five roads scored a dismal 5.9 out of 10 marks.

Of the five roads, Andheri-Kurla link road fared the worst with a rating of 3.4 out of 10 marks. Taken up for concretisation two years ago, the work is still in progress. The piecemeal concretisation has left the road uneven.The ongoing Metro-3 (Colaba-Bandra-Seepz) work has created bottlenecks and damaged drainage outlets on the stretch that connects Kurla (East) to the Western Express Highway, the panel found.

“The condition of the road is poor and drainage outlets are hard to find, which could lead to accumulation of rainwater on the road,” said Avijit Maji, a panel member and IIT-B professor.

For the island city, there is little to write home about. Babasaheb Ambedkar road near Gandhi Market in Dadar, is a chronic flooding spot, by the BMC’s own admission. During their visit, the experts found heaps of debris lying along the road. The worst fears came true during Thursday’s pre-monsoon showers when the road was flooded.

The panel unanimously gave a thumbs down to Sion-Mahim link road, another east-west connector, and predicted that it will be worst hit during a downpour. The Metro construction material dumped along the road will create bottlenecks, said Nandkumar Salvi, another panel member and retired BMC chief engineer. Experts suspect the debris from Metro work has blocked drainage outlets.

At the time of the inspection by the panel, the BMC was carrying out repairs on Ghatkopar-Mankhurd link road. Bad service road towards Ghatkopar and illegal parking will test motorists’ patience.

Work on the SV road stretch between Bandra and Andheri SV road looked complete. The quality of repairs — such as ad hoc paver block patches — failed to inspire confidence among the experts.

However, the panel was upbeat that SV and Ghatkopar-Mankhurd roads will remain motorable in the coming days.

Despite complaints, the BMC has been maintaining that it is happy with the repair or reconstruction of roads. Armed with a budget of more than ₹1,800 crore, the richest civic body in Asia, the BMC, had taken up relaying of 1,106 roads this year. Of them, 522 roads had been repaired as of May 31, claimed the BMC.