The current HAL airport road has been refurbished using plastic waste by a small and dynamic firm called "KK Plastic Waste Management Pvt Ltd". This firm is quite famous and provides the necessary justification to recycle the mountain loads of plastic waste that we generate:

http://www.goodnewsindia.com/index.php/Supplement/article/384/

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Laying concrete roads are no doubt the best solution but its an expensive solution..so needs to be used on need..especially roads with heavy slow traffic, as tar cannot take the pressure..

Also concrete roads will stop the conduit for revenue generation for politicians..that becomes a disadvantage! 

About grass on the pavements..ideal but that needs maintenance..how about just trees and  symetrical blocks which are reusable and easier to maintain..

Plastics on road is a very nice initative..its like 'u created it so live on it' . The other long term environmental effects of such roads needs to be seen!

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We use more and more potent solutions to stop the water from going into the road - we are also creating a draught strucken area below it. I sit possble for us to create roads that have holes in them for water to seep into, this way the ground water level is maintained. Atleast the dividers and the pavements should not be covered in concrete. The divider on Kanakapura Main road near J P Nagar 6th Phase is about 2 ft wide and is stuffed with concrete! Its a silly slution - it might have been wiser to fill it with mud and plant a few trees/plants!

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Hai

the idea of cemented roads is for strength and cleanliness.

By cementing the roads, the roads will be robust & strong and require little maintenance unlike bitimen roads which start decaying in winter whenever there is rains or water stagnates on the roads.

also by cementing and having grass covered on either side, the mud gets up covered and there will not be any exposure of mud to the atmosphere and there will not be any collection of sand or mud on the roads thus making it dirty.

you may kindly have a look at the roads in CV Raman Nagar or defence roads which were laid about 50 years back and are only now showing some signs of requiring repair.

also it may be advisable for Praja members to undertake a visit to Signapore or USA to study the quality of the roads there and adopt the same standards of constriction here.

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Hai

your comments are understandable

the laying of concrete roads though expensive initially will result in considerable savings in maintenance (as you said this plan may not suit the financial greed of the politicians)

the maintennace of grass on pavements can be handed over to IT or BT companies who may be allowed to advertise at convenient places and incraese their advertisment potential; this arrangement will be mutually beneficial

thanks

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Whilst cement roads are certainly superior & preferable every way, these are not practicable in our cities, particularly bangalore since roads are being cut or widened or dig up for flyovers, metro /mono /brt, etc. several times within a few years.

Only when it has been established that no such activity will take place, & when the various sewerage /water supply /telephone /fibre-optic conduits, etc. are in top class order & will last a very long time can a cement road be considered. Cement roads cost as much as 20-30 times more than ordinary asphalting, hence the need for careful consideration. Perhaps a section of the road, say the middle two lanes where no activity is involved can be permanently cemented, whilst leaving the rest with asphalt, until a time that traffic /infrastructure is under full control.

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Hi naveen,

Just a question - what are the advantages of cement roads vs plastic and vice versa? A mixture of both seem to be in the need for rain dense cities like bengaluru... 

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ssheragu,

I think you have a point - it can be the driver for proper coordination between agencies responsible for power, drainage, water, optic fibre cables, telephones etc.

An umbrella body to co-ordinate activities (Bangalore agenda task force) was set up long ago - & did do a great job then, but has now become defunct & presently, various agencies are back to their old ways.

Until we have a well co-ordinated system, I dont think cement roads can be made practicable. The absence of a govt also adds to this vaccuum as no one takes initiatives.

A few roads in cities such as mumbai were earlier done with the middle cemented for this reason (the areas above such utilities were left with asphalt), & perhaps, at present, this seems the only way to have any level of cementing of roads.

Bangalore's sewerage system in the old areas is said to be about 150 years old, & is in need of replacement - it may take a long time before we have a new system as a lot of investment is required.

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Hai

Your suggestion that it may not be practical because of frequent road cutting can be easily overcome

In fact the cpst & tine in digging up cement roads can be driver for proper coordination betweenagnecies responsible for power drainage, water, optic fibre cables, telephones etc.

With sufficient planning, these agencies cam be askek to lay their lines in a robust manner and subsequently cemnet roads can be liad thus protecting these sevice lines / conduits and provding good & lasting service to the public in rain, wind and sunshine

As for cementing only a part or middle of the road, such a suggestion is not at all viable. in fact it is counter prodcutive as we & will end up generating  a myriad of problems and will defeat the vety purpose of cement roads.

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MCadambi,

The development of the use of plastic waste, demolition materials, etc for road construction in India, I think is a way to conserve materials & cut costs, if possible - I dont think such methods are used anywhere else. All the same, it's good that the environment is also getting cared for, in the process.

Ordinary roads break up in just one monsoon with what our contractors use - but CRRI (Central Road Research Institute) has a program to develop alternate, longer lasting materials. Cement, of course, I believe is the best, but the investments are huge & it will be unaffordable - many roads in mumbai had been cemented thro' assistance from world bank, but within a few years, they are again widening or digging up for various reasons, thus, there seems to have been huge wastages.

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Now, zoom on the concrete SJP Road
New Indian Express:

 The Silver Jubilee Park (SJP) Road, which was out of bounds for motorists for about six months now, has been thrown open from Saturday.

DCP (Traffic) Ramasubba said that the SJP Road, a one-way road, will certainly ease up the traffic from City Market to Town Hall.

President of Karnataka Hardware and Allied Merchants Association, B K Goyal co-ordinated the construction of the road with BMP, BWSSB and other government agencies. BMP Commissioner K Jairaj has ensured that there would be no more cutting of the road by any agency. The work on SJP Road began on November 22, 2005 and was completed only recently(Nov 6, 2006).

There is a precedence of the BBMP laying concrete roads successfully in bangalore. This can always be extended.

About laying of cables..one simple solution is laying of the cables inside already laid cable ducts with manholes at regular intervals. This will solve the problem of digging up and also promote having organized way of laying cables instead of what companies esp. reliance practices to make a 1 inch wide slit in the road to lay the optic fibre..just to be cut when the road is dug to reach a overflowing drain!

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one reason for te success of Bangalore Agenda task force not bein sustained is that ptobably there was no www.bangalore.praja.in at that time

In order to prove the utility and excellence of cemented roads is to identify a reasonably long strect of road for cementing, widen it, construct pedestrian or foot paths of international standards, lay all cables for power, telephone, seqwage etc. tie all lose ends andopen the road fortraffic

in order to maintain such roads some reasonable toll can be introduced

as for Bangalore sewerage system, some world bank assistance can be taken and the entire system can be r-planed and implemeted to provide good underground sewerage system with easy accesibility for repair and maintenance and WHICH DOES NOT MIX OR COLLIDE WITH STORM WATER DRAINS OR WATER OR CABLE LINES

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this is a thread that reinforces all that is holy about public participation. almost all aspects of the debate have been thoroughly dissected. i will only add that, as blrsri has stressed, intersections and bus stops, where physical stresses due to vehicles dynamics is prominent due to breaking etc are the more important places where concrete needs to be considered seriously. there is no point in going concrete in midblocks. as folks on this thread have pointed out, waste recycling is a much more noble ideal to pursue for midblock pavement. i have nothing to add to sirnath sir's and naveen's points about fixing one metric and resolving all other conflicts around it and about judicious use of resources. a quick, ready and desirable metric is, how many roads can you concrete in bangalore? that covers a whole lot of issues. infact as far as roads are considered that is the best metric, which betrays confidence in planning and vision for the city. there are p number of people who will peddle the theory of experts and big people doing all thinking. but we have seen what that means. the elevated highway between silkboard and EC is an example of that. vasanth and SB, have put it on the block as it ought to be. bottom line, what does that 9 kms of muscle and power pulling do for bangalore beyond silkboard jn? heck it does not even fix the issues of a neighboring BTM layout which is adjacent to it. sure, design is the domain of experts, but the public reserve all rights to full and complete review of these plans. so they got french experts to do the designs, but what the local public discovered through rigorous science is that the cdp screws up bellandur and hence koramangala. deal with that. dont mask it.

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