Saturday, 2 February 2013

Waste of money

On 1st Main, V.V. Puram, Mysore City Corporation has paved the footpath with interlocking tiles at enormous expense. This raises some questions.
1. A 5-foot wide footpath is more than sufficient.  A 10-foot wide footpath would qualify as a "Rajamarga" level footpath! Where then is the need of paving the entire space of about 25 feet between the road and the compound of the adjoining houses?  
2. Interlocking tiles no doubt allow some percolation of rain water. But when it rains heavily, most of the water will end up on the street (since the footpath is sloping into the street) and destroy the asphalt. This is basic no-no of road design. The footpath has a nice canopy of shade-giving trees. They might now die because of reduced percolation of rain water. Who designed and executed the footpath? 
It appears that we have spent unnecessarily on an extra-wide footpath and will spend more repairing the road which will need resurfacing very often.
Dwarkanath Narayan, Mysore Grahakara Parishat