Increased citizen participation can help address the menace of potholes

 

Potholes are becoming a menace especially in the rapidly expanding urban areas. Not only do they affect the traffic flow but pose significant risk of injuries and accidents especially to two wheeler riders. This issue becomes even more evident during and after monsoons. The surface of the road gets washed away due to various reasons including quality of road construction, ageing of asphalt, traffic burden on the road etc. With monsoon filling these potholes with water, vehicle riders are unable to gauge the dept of the potholes leading to serious risks.  With Pune City expanding in all directions, increasing number of vehicles on the road, potholes have become a part of our day to day commuting.  Sometimes seamless commuting seems to be a distant dream and people express helplessness of the situation.

The fact is that this issue is a challenge but not impossible to be addressed if public participation improves. We can keep on raising concerns with the civic bodies, but there a few simple things that we can do to help bring in a tangible change.

Adar Poonawalla Clean City Initiative has been trying to address the issue with two dedicated state-of-the-art machines. This is backed by team members who search for potholes across various parts of the city. One of the important elements of this initiative is the citizen’s app. People can just click the photograph of the pothole and upload it on the app. The issue is addressed at the earliest possible opportunity. Currently the two machines have a capacity to address about 35 potholes per day with about 30-40 minutes required to fix each pothole. The bulk of the work has been done in the eastern areas of the city and also in the new western suburbs. Most of the responses come from the APCCI team and traffic police whose contribution in addressing this issue is significant and laudable. But what is needed is more participation from the people. Once it used to take only 15-20 minutes from one end of Pune City to other. Today Pune has become one of the fastest growing cities with a radius of over 50 Km. It takes time to commute in Pune and potholes add to the inconvenience and frustration of commuters. If we want a seamless and a better commuting experience it’s time to act and do our bit. It is a challenging task but not impossible!

Malhar Karwande,

 COO, Adar PoonawallaClean City Initiative