Milling a costly affair: BBMP

Core areas of Bengaluru are sinking, courtesy the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), which performs the annual ritual of asphalting roads.

Many houses in core Bengaluru are now below the road level. A heavy downpour would be sufficient to flood these houses and convert them into swimming pools of sorts with no place for the water to drain out.

Technically, the BBMP should mill the road before asphalting them. Milling the road means scratching the existing layer of tar by at least two inches before asphalting it. However, the Palike never does it. The asphalting of roads has been outsourced by the BBMP and the contractors never bother to mill the road, in order to save money.

A Palike engineer says that earlier there used to be a provision to mill the roads in the tender conditions but now it has also been removed. “All that the contractors do is put another layer of asphalt over the battered road in the name of improving roads. This benefits the contractor but people suffer because of it,” says the engineer.

The engineer-in-chief of BBMP M R Venkatesh contends that removing many layers of the asphalt would damage the foundation of the road. “Once the foundation of the road is damaged, we will have to repair the entire road from the bottom. This is the reason that the milling is avoided. It is cost intensive,” he explains.

One of the reasons for not milling the roads is that the Palike does not have a mechanised automatic milling machine. The machine peels off the layer with uniformity. The machine is very costly, although it is in use in Tamil Nadu.

BBMP chief engineer K T Nagaraj says hiring the milling machine is also a costly affair. It is given on rent at a very high cost. He says there are only two such machines available in Karnataka. He explains that the bitumen obtained from milling the road can be reused for mixing it with tar for asphalting the road.

Construction cost going up

New independent houses coming up in the city are at least three feet above the road level. Reason: The fear among property owners that their house would sink within a decade due to regular asphalting of roads without milling. As a result, the construction cost of independent houses increases by at least 15% to 20%.

Venkatesh M, a civil contractor says, “I suggest my clients to have their ground floor at least three feet above the road level to prevent flooding in future. I have seen water stagnating in many houses in old Bengaluru. They are below the road level.”