Mumbai received over 8,000 pothole complaints this monsoon
What's the story
Mumbai's monsoon season has brought back the city's notorious pothole problem. According to the Indian Express, between June 10 and August 20, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) received over 8,000 complaints about potholes across its 26 wards. The eastern suburbs were the worst affected, with S ward in Bhandup recording the highest number of complaints at 471. The BMC claimed it has resolved 7,829 of the complaints.
Complaint resolution
Comparison with last year
Last year, by mid-August, the civic body had received over 8,600 complaints.
The complaints were received via numerous civic platforms, with over 5,000 registered on the My BMC Marg forum, over 1,500 on WhatsApp, and over 800 on X.
The complaints were received despite the BMC's ongoing road concretization initiative, which began in 2022 with the goal of concretizing more than 700 km of the city's 2,050 km road network that had previously remained unconcretized.
Improvement claimed
Massive improvement over previous year
A senior civic official claimed that despite the complaints, there has been a massive improvement over the previous year.
The official said, "We have seen...massive improvement over the previous year."
They added that the quantity of mastic used to fix potholes this year is much lower than what had been used last year in the same period.
"This is an indication of the fact that the potholes are less severe," the officer was quoted as saying by the Indian Express.
Repair methods
BMC's response to pothole complaints
The BMC uses mastic for 99% of pothole repairs and has deployed 65 mastic cookers this year across its wards.
Civic officials said many complaints were linked to depressions around trenches dug for utility work.
An official said, "Wherever there has been recent trenching work and as the trench settles, we have observed higher pothole complaints in these locations."
Commissioner statement
Commissioner says road concretization has helped reduce potholes
BMC Commissioner Ashwini Bhide said road concretization has helped reduce potholes but admitted that the problem continues on non-concretized roads.
She said, "The number of potholes has reduced owing to road concretization this year."
"...we definitely have some bituminous stretches where we have potholes. For that too, we have a mechanism through which once the potholes are identified by our people, it is identified by our teams and they work 24/7 to fix them," Bhide told The Indian Express.