In February 2018, the BBMP called for tenders on mechanised sweeping of bigger arterial roads and awarded the contracts only last month. The work order could be issued anytime this month for the Bommanahalli zone. Every zone (there are 8 in Bangalore) will get two big machines by Feb-March 2018. Once that happens, atleast the Outer Ring Road should be largely dust-free. However, the service roads and the arterial roads within HSR Layout will take a longer time as you need smaller battery-operated machines for that. While the BBMP has announced this proposal, the tenders are yet to be called. “They could be called now or might take a year, we don’t really know,” says Bommanahalli garbage contractor Roopesh Reddy. “The bigger machines can only operate on roads that have a road divider in the middle. For all other roads, only the smaller machines will help.”
Although the suspended particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution levels aren’t much, we did notice recently that it spiked above the normal values at 7am. This clearly means that the early morning joggers and walkers will be most affected. And residents believe that the ‘sweep and forget’ mechanism of the BBMP is adding to the pollution levels. The solution is mechanised sweeping.
However, while the BBMP has announced smaller machines to take care of the internal roads of neighbourhoods, mechanised machines on bigger thoroughfares like Outer Ring Road, Bannerghatta Road and Hosur Road are already operational but on a smaller scale. One such machine is stationed in HSR Layout for that purpose and it’s owned by the BBMP. Since it operates only at night (because of the traffic), you might not have seen it. It begins work at 10pm and is operational all night. Here’s a video of that in action on one of the neighbouring roads.
Until the smaller machines are tendered and put to work, which could take atleast another year, the walkers and joggers will have to put up with the dust pollution. Says resident Shashidhara K: “Morning walks are a challenge for many with so much dust in the air. The PM2.5 pollution increases due to much dust on the roads. The daily sweeping by BBMP increases this dust, since they just sweep and park it along the road side. What we need is a mechanism to sweep and pickup the dust at the same time. At least twice a week if they do mechanised, then all the dust will be removed.”
In HSR Layout, the residents complain that there is just too much dust on 27th Main, 22nd Cross, 19th Main, 17th Cross and 14th Main. “The places where large trees are present, the dust is a little less,” says Shashidhara, citing 24th main and 16th Cross. At 5 kms per hour driving speed for these machines, we can easily cleanup two sectors in a day, including the inner roads.”
Right now, the bigger machines have to operate 65 kmph/night and sweep the roads twice a week. Earlier, the BBMP used to dump the dust cleaned from the bigger roads in the vacant site opposite Rasaganga behind BDA Complex. When the site owner objected and fenced the entire area, the BBMP has begun dumping the road debris on a closed thoroughfare of Outer Ring Road. This is also ad-hoc because they are supposed to shift this garbage once every month to the landfills. With private garbage contractors coming on to the scene from early next year, this situation is expected to improve because these rules are specified to them. One big machines can sweep and collect the dust at the same time. In one night, it can collect all the dust on 65 kilometres of roads and unload it on to an empty site rented for the purpose by the contractor. Once every month, that road debris is supposed to be transferred to the landfill.