The Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) plans to launch digital parking service in New Road area and Durbarmarg within four months.

Yadav Prasad Koirala, chief executive officer at the KMC, said they had completed their study and would soon invite a tender to develop the project.

In New Road, the proposed parking facility would be built along the Aakash Bhairab-Bishal Bazar-RB Complex Street. As for Durbarmarg, the plan is to create digital parking space on either side of the street. With digital parking system, people can book parking space and pay for the service using a mobile app. To avail the service of digital parking, one must register their vehicles. The KMC expects to resolve the problem of parking space hoarding at the Capital’s busiest streets with its smart parking service.“If you visit these areas, parking space is hard to find. This is because many people have been found parking their vehicles throughout the day.

Once we adopt the new system, a person will not be allowed to occupy a parking space for hours on end because there will be a record of parking duration,” said Mahesh Kafle, chief of Public Private Partnership division of the KMC.

According to The Kathmandu Post, four IT firms have already expressed their interests in developing the app for the project. Besides starting digital parking service, the KMC also has a plan of building a multi-storey parking facility on a 890 sq mt property that it owns at Dharmapath in New Road.Mayor Bidhya Sundar Shakya had announced this plan during the 23rd anniversary of the KMC last year.