The hope is that the roads will not be dug up again for a decade or two.
Harried commuters in Bengaluru have been slowed down even further by the ongoing maintenance work on major roads across the city. The repair work is part of the 'Tender SURE' project under which Rs 200 crore is being spent to improve 25 major roads. The funding was approved in Karnataka's budget for 2012-13, but the work is still crawling along.
"It is very difficult for us to move around. It's not just today. It has been going on for a long time now," said Shubha, a young woman pedestrian, as she picked her way through a dug-up pavement on the busy Cunningham Road in the city's Central Business District that has seen work going on for months.
Even businesses along the road have been affected by the maintenance work. Dilip, who manages a restaurant, said, "There is no parking space. People are not coming into the restaurant."
The vision of the road project is long-term and aims to avoid repeated digging up of roads by different civic agencies. The hope is that the roads will not be dug up again for a decade or two as different agencies are meant to be coordinating to finish the laying of pipes and cables that are needed during the during this project. While it is testing the patience of commuters, the project does have its supporters.
"A new design of roads which are called integrated roads...well-designed footpaths for pedestrians," Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, the Chairman of Biocon told NDTV. But Ms Shaw, a prominent citizen of the city, also highlighted the delays in the project which she said was due to the "contractors not doing an optimal job" as also the lack of "close synchronisation in terms of various agencies in the government."
"Work will be complete before March. They will be having footpaths, no road digging, just like foreign countries," Ramalinga Reddy, the minister in charge of Bengaluru, told NDTV.
Authorities claim that the city will soon have world-class roads but citizens can't help wishing that they don't have to suffer dug up roads.