The Hindu 24.09.2009
Massive digging operation on roads troubles city residents
Karthik Madhavan
| Sources in the Corporation say mobile telephony companies are engaged in digging |
– PHOTO: M. GOVARTHAN 
Poor planning?: Almost all major roads in the city have either been dug or are being dug, which is causing road users a lot of problems.
ERODE: Roads in the city can broadly be divided in to two categories: dug and waiting to be dug.
This is because the digging operation is under way on a massive scale on almost all roads that warrant a mention in the 45-ward city.
Main roads, other roads that serve as bus routes, streets and by-lanes - not one is spared. Such is the scale of digging that it is impossible to move from one point to another in the city without riding or driving on a road that has not been dug or is under digging.
The digging, though necessary, hinders traffic flow on roads or streets that are too narrow to hold the ever-increasing traffic.
Take for example the Municipal Colony road that serves as the entry and exit to many housing colonies in the west of the city and also to residents of Manickampalayam.
The road, which sees heavy movement of two-wheelers, three-wheel and four-wheel goods carriers and mini buses, is undergoing digging.
One portion of the work is over and at the very stretch, the dug up earth has been too loosely placed to facilitate traffic. The result: vehicles, unable to use the dug side of road, jostle for space with vehicles coming from the opposite direction.
At Ganapathipuram, near the District Registrars office, off Cauvery Road, police have placed a barricade to divert vehicles proceeding towards Cauvery Road.
On the road that is supposed to take the diverted traffic, digging is going on. With very little space to manoeuvre, vehicle users are left wondering which way to proceed.
At Kalyana Sundaram Nagar, Chidambaram Colony, Raja Kadu, Majid Street, Agraharam Street the story is no different in that the same problem of narrow roads getting narrower persists everywhere.
This is because organisations engaged in digging do not close the pits well enough to facilitate traffic.
Sources in the Erode Municipal Corporation say mobile telephony companies Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd., Airtel, Aircel and Idea are engaged in digging operations.
BSNL has sought permission to dig 898 m, Airtel 350 m, Idea 1,768 m and Aircel 3,401 m. This is in addition to the civic body digging roads for laying water pipes. The sources say the Corporation is digging close to 23 km.
Asked about the massive digging operations, Corporation Commissioner B. Balachandran says the civic body has given digging permission at one go because all the works will get over at more or less the same time to facilitate easy flow of traffic across the city.
He adds that it has obtained 25 per cent of the digging cost as deposit from the telephone companies to ensure that they close the pits to facilitate traffic.
“If they do a shoddy work, they will have to forfeit the deposit,” he warns.
