PUNE: The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has decided to use road stabilisation technique to speed up road work and reduce development cost of roads. The Road Department has claimed that the technique will reduce 20 t0 22 per cent of the cost of road work.
Pune city has a total of 1,400 km of roads. The PMC has to maintain these roads, construct new roads and convert bituminous roads into cement concrete roads. The PMC spends Rs 3,500 per square metre to construct tar (bituminous road) and Rs 4,500 per square metre for cement concrete road.
According to Road Department officials, the PMC constructs around 15 km new roads every year.
Now, the PMC has decided to use Indian Road Congress (IRC) approved road stabilisation or base stabilisation technique to construct roads. The purpose is to save time, money and speed up work. The PMC has mentioned techniques in the annual budget of 2020-21.
It consists of changing the natural soil to meet an engineering purpose. Improvements include increasing the weight bearing capabilities, tensile strength, and overall performance and strengthen road pavements.
The objective is to provide low-cost alternatives that reduce aggregate wear and loss, reduce road-surface maintenance, and reduce the time period between major rehabilitation (i.e., between adding new aggregate or the total reconditioning of the road pavement).
While speaking to Sakal Times, PMC Road Department Chief Superintendent Engineer VG Kulkarni said, “In this technique, road layer will be made durable and strong with the help of special chemicals. Therefore, we don’t need more bituminous and it will help to save the cost of roads. Indian Road Congress has given the green signals to use these techniques for road construction.”
He added, “The technique is environment-friendly. It will save 30 per cent road material. We can use old road layers for making new cement roads. It will save 30 to 40 per cent road construction timing as we don’t need to dig too much. We can remove certain surfaces of soil and use this technique.”
