At present seven of Dulevo 200 Quattro are operational in The Bangalore-Hyderabad, Hyderabad-Nagpur and Chennai-Bangalore, Panipat and Chandigarh-Ambala highways.Generally, a machine is put into action soon after the road is ready and much before the toll or traffic has started. Once the road is ready it has to be clear and cleaned.
Besides sweeping , the machine also effectively collects bigger particles of debris for e.g.: brick or certain construction materiasl. This ‘mechanical suction machine’ are ideal for bigger roads where there couldbe bigger things lying around and need to be picked up mechanically. This is a phase I activity. Once the road becomes operational for traffic, all the standard NHAI guidelines come in to force and the concessionaires have to follow the process in terms of frequency. So at this point the activity moves to day-to-day maintenance to keep the road clean.
The concessionaire may decide to buy the equipment oroutsource the cleaning to a service provider.
“Our mechanical + suction equipment can effectively remove big and small things from the road,” says Khurana. “If the road stretches to say 200km, we are talking about cleaning four sites. We’ve to choose the equipment that can manage to sweep 8-10 km per hour. So, if the machine has to sweep 70km, then it would need seven-eight working hours.
“We analyse how dirty the road tends to get. For eg: we’ve a road to clean at Rajasthan where there is dust storm. We find more sand than dust on the road on a regular basis. Thus we’ve to decide on the size of the hopper of the machine based on how much dust we’ve to collect in a given time.
“If there is too much of dust, the hopper will fill quickly. In that case, we’ve to see how to discharge what we are collecting. So, we need to have discharge point constructed by the concessionaire where we can dump all the collected dust or we’ve to make alternative arrangement which could be a tractor trolley that can collect all the dump and we can continue withour sweeping work. If I’m an equipment supplier I don’t have to provide the tractor trolley and if I am a service provider I have to arrange for one.But ultimately the concessionaire has to decide where we’ve to go and dump the dust.
“When compared to normal roads, it is faster to clean national highways. Normal city roads tend to be dirtier as you may find all kind of things on the road while on the national highway there is generally a lot of dust. Many people opt to clean at night because the traffic is less and one can fairly sweep faster, not causing much obstacle to vehicles.”
“However, working by night is challenging,” says Harikumar Selvaraj, VP-Large System Division, Kam-Avida Enviro Engineers Pvt. Ltd, adding that “people are not disciplined to follow traffic rules and though while cleaning safety norms are stringently followed, there are chances of accidents taking place.”
Kam-Avida’s Kamsweep 5LCH sweeping machine is operating on various highways, including airport link road from (Devenahalli) Bangalore airport to the city, Hyderabad highway road, Delhi-Gurgoan highway and Chennai-Dindivanam highway. These highways come on both rural as well as urban areas. Normally cleaning is done by night.
“We’ve a schedule for cleaning. Two-three helpers accompanying the sweeper begin working around 8 or 9 in the evening. On the way, if they find carcass or any other object it is removed manually,” adds Hari.
“We supply the cleaning machines to the contractors and in few cases we’ve taken up the total project on a turnkey basis and we also have our own contractor to do this work.”
The average speed of the chassis mounted road sweeper Kamsweep is 5-7km per hour covering a stretch of at least 40-50km. “Depending on the length of the highway, we also have two machines running in Pune and Hyderabad stretches whereas in Bangalore we’ve one machine. Usually, if the highway is around 100km two machines are deployed. We analyse the requirement, do a survey and submit a report initially to the concessionaire, based on which we decide how many machines is required.”
Khurana believes that the sweeping machines “have to be such that they work well in the Indian conditions:
- They should be able to remove the debris
- They should be able to remove the dust through an effective filtration system
- They should be capable of working without water because water is preciousre resource and you may be working in a stretch of road where you may not find water.
Dulevo, with mechanical suction, is able to effectively perform all the above aspects in the India conditions.”
Maintenance of highways is not just restricted to road sweeping, explains a L&T spokesperson. “It includes road furniture, guard rails, kilometre stone, delineators and reflectors, gantries and signages. It also deals with the maintenance of the right of way, which is basically sprinkled with avenue plantation and turfing at times. There is toll pitching done on high embankments and likewise every aspect of facility- buildings and electronic equipment installed on the roads like VMSes and highway traffic management system componentshas to be maintained.”
L&T has set up its own highway maintenance system implemented on the stretches, including 76km Palanpur Swaroopganj highway, Farukhanagar-Kotakatta (NS-2/AP-4), Vadodara-Bharuch Package and Chennai-Tada and others. Some of the critical worare undertaken by L&T’s specialist teams and some other activities are outsourced.
In today’s context there aren’t many companies available to provide cleaning services, especially on stretches located in the middle of nowhere, says the spokesman. Neither are there agencies coming forward to provide cleaning equipment on a monthly basis or on a contractual basis. “We are thus planning to invest incleaning equipment and put our own team to do the cleaning.
“We’ve one road-sweeper running on the Panipat project. In highway scenario, many don’t know understand what needs to be cleaned because if you are going on a carriage way, if you’ve a soft shoulder on the left side, you land up cleaning only one edge, the median edge. If it is paved shoulder on the left hand side as well, then you end up cleaning both the two edges on a carriage way. Since it is a divided carriage way, you would be cleaning four edges. So the frequency of cleaning is purely dependent on the area of operation. If it’s urban then you need to clean more frequently and if it is rural area then you end up cleaning less frequently.”
