Introduction

Kathmandu valley comprises Kathmandu Metropolitan City, Lalitpur Sub-Metropolitan City and three Municipalities Kirtipur, Bhaktapur, and Madhyapurthimi. Rapid urbanization in the last decades resulted in the great change in land-use pattern.

Urban area is the engine of the national economy. Efficiency of the transport network reduces the cost of transportation which is related to the prices of each product. People’s participation in the economic activities and income generation are greatly affected by the urban mobility and accessibility. These issues of mobility and accessibility are directly related to the travel time and cost.

Urban mobility and accessibility are major concern for the urban planner. General trend, for any growing cities average travel speed is decreasing. However, due to inadequate Traffic management and Transportation planning effort, congestion is increasing in highway intersection and city roads. It is the main cause in the formation of long queues on major urban streets, and the city centers.

Traffic congestion in the context of Kathmandu valley, is very urgent problem for many reasons and to improve its overall development. Many attempts have been initiated, from stakeholders, planners, and government and non-government organizations and even by many donor agencies to improve transportation related problems. Due to lack of systematic data recording and sufficient research on the theme, each steps for the understanding and resolving the problem become worthless.

To cope with the above issues, government has come up with some comprehensive development plans of the area including “physical development plan for the Kathmandu valley in 1969” and “Kathmandu valley physical development concept in 1984”. However, in spite of these plans condition of the urban area of the valley has worsened day by day. This fact seems to come from, among other things, following reasons:

· Lack of coordination between concerned authorities;

· Fragmental implementation of improvement works mainly done with foreign aids for the solution of impending issues on the spot,

· And lack of database and research in this field.

In these circumstances, government of Nepal, under the financial assistance from the Asian development bank, has conducted a study named “Kathmandu valley urban development plans and programs” with the aim of formulating of more concrete and implementation plans and programs for the realization of the concepts proposed in the 1984 plan.

In Kathmandu Valley, the central city like New Road, Ashon, Indra chowk , Khicha Pokhari etc can be distinguished as the Central Business District. Most of the economic transaction of the Kathmandu metropolitan city used to happen in these areas. The transportation equally plays great role in the economic uplift-ment of this area. The municipal has provided offside parking in this area for the parking facilities to the auto users. But in the present scenario, the congestion is becoming the major problem due to the inadequate infrastructure and increasing trend of the private vehicle users. The problem of congestion is resulted may due to the weak existing parking policy of Kathmandu Metropolitan city. Since there is inadequate parking space, but it is cheap, most of the private auto user attracted to drive through this area. Due to the lack of proper space, the auto users park the vehicle in improper way, which lead to the traffic congestion in the major street.

“The parking policy is one of the most powerful means to manage the travel demand and traffic in city centers” -Shifton and Burd-Eden (2001)

“The parking policy refers to parking facility regulation, pricing, and management and design decisions.” -TDM encyclopedia