The Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) is planning to announce a tender for multi-storey smart parking facility in New Road next week.

The bid, according to KMC will be open for both national and international bidders.

The multi-storey parking facility will be constructed at KMC’s own land in Dharmapath. Once the facility is constructed, it will ease parking problems in New Road, one of the busiest business hubs in the Capital, with only a handful of parking areas which are invariably packed and poorly managed.

The eight-storey parking facility will accommodate 400 vehicles, according to KMC Spokesperson Gyanendra Karki.

“This will be constructed under public-private partnership (PPP) model in which the company which wins the bid, will invest for the whole infrastructure,” he said. “The company, after managing the facility for certain years will hand back the property to the KMC.”

This is not the first time that the metropolis had announced plan for smart parking.

Marking the KMC’s 23rd-anniversary last year, Mayor Bidya Sundar Shakya had announced the plan for the multi-storey parking to solve the parking problems in the metropolis.

“It was due to some technical reasons we could not work on it, but this time it is going to materialise,” said Karki.  

The KMC’s Public Private Partnership Unit is handling the bid process. “We are at the final stage of announcing the bid,” said Mahesh Kafle, head of KMC’s public private partnership unit.

Once PPP model in New Road materialises, the KMC plans to construct such parking in Durbarmarg under the same modality.

Growing vehicle numbers in the Kathmandu Valley has caused the problem of traffic congestion and inadequate parking spaces in core city areas.

To solve this problem the KMC in collaboration with the Metropolitan Traffic Police Division has recently announced 143 temporary parking lots. Among them, 83 parking spaces are designated for two-wheelers and 60 for four-wheelers.