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DGH planning to provide smooth rides

The Directorate General of Highways (DGH) is planning to smooth out approximately 107km of road surfaces around the nation this year by burying manhole covers.

The project will include roads with heavy traffic or with manholes that are hardly ever opened. Meanwhile, the directorate said it will also consider complaints and reports from local motorists about uneven road surfaces.

Lee Chung-chang (李忠璋), deputy director of the DGH's maintenance division, said yesterday that the directorate began work on the project in June. As of last month, it had repaved 66km of road surface and covered 2,429 manhole covers.

Lee said that the idea was proposed because deaths and injuries caused by uneven road surfaces and potholes accounted for a majority of legal cases seeking national compensation.

He said in 2006, for example, five national compensation cases were related to substandard road conditions, and one to a protruding manhole cover.

The judge eventually ruled in favor of the complainant, Lee said.

The former deputy minister of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC), Chen Chin-jun (陳景峻), now the Cabinet secretary-general, asked the directorate to commence the project in May last year, he said.

Lee said the directorate first worked on pipeline lids on seven provincial highways, adding that the result was so impressive that MOTC minister Tsai Duei (蔡堆) asked the directorate in June to expand the scale of the project.

Lee explained that workers will gauge road flatness after covering the lids with asphalt and concrete. The standard deviation must be below 0.23cm, he said.

The quality of road surfaces after the work is comparable to the standard set for expressways, he said.

Lee emphasized that the pipelines belong to different government organizations, and any construction would not begin until the directorate has consulted them.

The organizations will pay for construction expenses, he said.

"Anyone who needs to open the lids after they have been buried must file an official application, and the work must be done according to standardized operating procedures," Lee said.

"Or they will be fined NT$30,000 to NT$150,000 for damaging the road surface without permission." he said.

Anybody wishing to report an uneven road surface can do so by visiting the directorate's Web site at www.thb.gov.tw.
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