An Efficient Solution to Rising Transportation Problems in Kathmandu

Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography ISSN 1598-4850(Print) Vol. 32, No. 6, 617-623, 2014 ISSN 2288-260X(Online) http://dx.doi.org/10.7848/ksgpc.2014.32.6.617 Original article

Cycling: An Efficient Solution to Rising Transportation Problems in Kathmandu

Yang, In Tae1) · Acharya, Tri Dev2) · Shin, Moon Seung3)

Abstract The rapid urbanization in developing countries has caused trasportation problems that need to be solved. For that reason, the study evaluates the potential of cycling in the densely populated part of Kathmandu valley. Slopes and existing roads have been applied as the input cost rasters for finding the shortest cost routes between stations. By taking the average cycling velocity, time to travel from station to destination were compared with the average commuting time in the public transportation. The result comes out as similar time with the public transportation. Although the cycling seems potential replacement for public transportation commuters, in fact, there are some setbacks needed to be supported by the government to make it reality in future.

Keywords : Cycling, Urbanization, Kathmandu, GIS

1. Introduction It consists of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Lalitpur districts. The reason for rapid and unplanned mushrooming of the city Urbanization has been processed rapidly in most of is due to several factors, such as Maoist insurgency and Tarai developing countries. It has been observed in Nepal from insecurity, lack of rural educational and health facilities, the 1970s onward, showing one of the highest rates in Asia educational and employment opportunities in the capital. It is and the Pacific (ADB/ICIMOD, 2006). Since the population the first region in Nepal to face the unprecedented challenges in Kathmandu valley is growing by 4 percents per year of rapid urbanization and modernization at a metropolitan with a population of 2.5 million people, it becomes the scale (Muzzini and Aparicio, 2013). most populated city in country, as well as one of the fastest Among many, one of the emerging challenges is growing metropolitan in South Asia (Muzzini and Aparicio, transportation development inside the valley. Kathmandu 2013). Kathmandu valley is nearly round shape with has not yet seen the modern bulk carrier transportation, such diameters of about 30 km east–west and 25 km north–south. as railways. Hence, roads are the only way to travel, which in

Received 2014. 11. 30, Revised 2014. 12. 14, Accepted 2014. 12. 21 1) Member, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Kangwon National Univ., Korea (E-mail: [email protected]) 2) Corresponding Author, Member, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Kangwon National Univ., Korea (E-mail: [email protected]) 3) Member, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Kangwon National Univ., Korea (E-mail: [email protected])

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

617 Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography, Vol. 32, No. 6, 617-623, 2014 fact are inadequate and poorly managed. Buses, minibuses, however, the supply is limited. Long waiting lines are vans, pickups, trucks, cars, tempo (three wheelers) and common during crisis periods. In addition, greenhouse gas motorcycles are the modes of transportation for services and and pollutants, emitted from these large numbers of vehicles, daily commuting in the city. have vastly contributed to the air pollution. During the long traffic jams, peoples are susceptible to air pollution, which may consequently degrade their health. Therefore, the reduction of fossil fueled vehicles is a necessity, particularly, for a crowded city, like Kathmandu. By taking these facts into consideration including Kathmandu’s geography, up surging oil price and deteriorating environment, the cycling might be the best alternative for the existing transportation related problems.

Fig. 1. Vehicle registration in Bagmati zone (DoTM, 2013)

Fig. 3. Cycle costs and benefits compared to other modes of transports (SFMTA, 2013) Fig. 2. Travel mode share in 1991 and 2010 (CEN/UN- Habitat, 2014) Compared to other modes of transports, the cycling has many advantages (Fig. 3); it neither depends on the age nor According to Department of Transport Management the income; it is healthy, cheap, environmentally friendly and report, over the past 10 years motorization has increased quiet, and also takes a little space (SFMTA, 2013; Transport by 12% per year (Fig. 1) (DoTM, 2013), while the modal Learning, 2013). In addition, the cycling as a mode of urban share of public transport has remained stagnant (Fig. 2). transportation results in health benefits, environmental With increasing population and number of people owning benefits and economic benefits (Castillo-Manzano and private vehicles, the roads becomes narrower, and more Sánchez-Braza, 2013; Daley and Rissel, 2011; Florida, time takes to commute. In fact, frequent traffic congestion, 2011; Rabl and De Nazelle, 2012; Woodcock et al., 2009). fumes and excessive noise are shown possible consecutive According to the research in New Zeland (Macmillan et al., problems. It is challenging to finding a way into public 2014), System dynamic modeling shows transforming urban buses, microbuses, tempos and taxis, without mentioning roads using best practice of physical separation on main the actual overcrowded and uncomfortable journey. The roads and bicycle-friendly speed reduction on local streets proposed solution from the government to accommodate would yield benefits 10-25 times greater than costs, over next these challenges faces an uncertain fate due to land 40 years (Macmillan et al., 2014). acquisition disputes and higher compensation demanded by The purpose of study is to evaluate the potential of cycling locals for their property. as an alternative mode of transportation based on time to On the other hand, since the most of running vehicles are travel within the existing road infrastructure inside Ring fossil fueled, the price of fossil fuel is increasing sharply; road, Kathmandu.

618 Cycling: An Efﬁcient Solution to Rising Transportation Problems in Kathmandu

2. Area of Study and Data

The area of study is located inside the Ring road, which is four lane ring around Kathmandu (Fig. 4). Its total length is 27 km and approximately 4.5 km radius considering Ratnapark as the center. Most of the population and services are located within or the proximity of the Ring road. It has been planned to expand into the eight-lane highway with bicycle lane around it. The following data has been used for this study: 1) Slope: Topographic maps provided by the Department of Survey, Government of Nepal was used to prepare the percentage slope map (Fig. 5) of the study area with 10 × 10 m pixel size. 2) Road Network: Due to the lack of topologically correct or updated road network, the Open Street Map (OSM) (Fig. 6) was used. The data is only polylines and does not follow the spatial network rules. Fig. 6. OSM road network, ring road

3) Stations: Seven densely populated built-up areas around the Ring Road were selected. These stations were selected by approximate equally divided perimeters. They are Balaju, NarayanGopal chowk, Chabahik, Koteshwor (Tinkune), Lagankhel (Mahalakshmi), Balkhu and Sitapila. Open space near Ratnapark was considered as the central destination.

3. Methodology

Fig. 4. Study area In this study, raster based GIS technique, was used to find the least cost path based on the slope and available road network by comparing time to travel. A general workﬂow is shown in Fig. 7.

Fig. 5. Percentage slopemap Fig. 7. Workﬂow of the study

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Table 1. Rank and weightage of different parameters for cycling path

Scenario Criteria Class Rank Weight (%) 0-2 1 Slope Slope 2-5 2 100 >5 3 0-2 1 Slope 2-5 2 100 Slope Road >5 3 Road All 1 0 0-2 1 Slope 2-5 2 70 Weighted SlopeRoad >5 3 (WSlope Road) Cycleway Footway living_street residential, road trunk 1 Road tertiary , tertiary_link pedestrian unclassified track path 2 30 Primary, primary_link, secondary, secondary_link 3

In this study, the slope is considered as the most 30% weightage as well as the priority to inner residential important factor for cycling. The bicycle lane needs to be and tertiary roads. This could save time and give smooth ride designed around 2% but no more than 5%, the percentage experience. slope map derived from topographic maps, is divided into The methodology comes out with three different cycling three categories: >5%, 2-5% and 0-2% in the order of least cost scenarios by overlaying the thematic maps, weighted favorable (Table 1). Being the valley, it’s obvious to have the overlay methods using the spatial analysis tool in ArcGIS 9.2. central plane areas whereas the peripherals shows the high During the weighted overlay analysis, the ranking has been slope. given for each individual parameter of each thematic map, The importance of land is very high in Kathmandu, so the so as the weightage was assigned according to the inﬂuence new lane construction or expansion is very difficult here. of different parameters that presents in Table 1. The rank By considering the situation, we have applied existing roads determines the ease to difficult states of cycling condition 1 as input. The OSM road networks were firstly got rid of the to 3, respectively. Bridleway, Service roads, Steps raceway and railway, which The Cost Distance tool was used to calculate the least are inappropriate for cycling. Then the rest class of road accumulative cost distance from each cell to the nearest over network is divided into three categories (Table 1). each cost surfaces. Finally the least cost path tool was used In order to determine the routes, the study considers the to calculate the least cost paths from different stations to a Ratnapark as a central destination of purely slope, slope & destination. road, and weighted Slope & road scenarios. The first slope based route is determined purely by the existing topography 4. Results and Discussion to know a path with the least slopes. The second condition follows the same rules but only through the existing roads, In this study, the result (Fig. 8) shows that the most of which expects to be longer length. In fact, the cycling in route length differences by purely slope costs are within busy primary and secondary roads is not safer by accounting a kilometer, except Narayangopal Chowk (Table 2). of accidents and air pollutants and spending time in traffic Addionally, those differences in route lengths between signals. Therefore, in third condition, the roads are given SlopeRoad and WSlopeRoad are much similar and shorter,

620 Cycling: An Efﬁcient Solution to Rising Transportation Problems in Kathmandu

Table 2. Difference in length and time to travel at 10 and 15 km/hr

Difference in Difference in Stations Type Length Length with Length with Time (min.) @ Time (min.) @ (km) Slope SlopeRoad 10km/hr 15km/hr Slope 3.044 Balaju SlopeRoad 3.215 0.17 19.3 12.9 WSlopeRoad 3.481 0.44 0.27 20.9 13.9 Slope 3.502 Balkhu SlopeRoad 4.057 0.56 24.3 16.2 WSlopeRoad 4.146 0.64 0.09 24.9 16.6 Slope 4.227 Chabahil SlopeRoad 5.142 0.92 30.9 20.6 WSlopeRoad 5.202 0.97 0.06 31.2 20.8 Slope 4.787 Koteshwor 4.5 23.0 (Tinkune) SlopeRoad 5.746 0.96 3 WSlopeRoad 5.647 0.86 -0.10 33.9 22.6 Slope 6.115 Lagankhel (MahaLakshmi) SlopeRoad 7.316 1.20 43.9 29.3 WSlopeRoad 6.859 0.74 -0.46 41.2 27.4 Slope 5.164 NarayanGopal Chowk SlopeRoad 5.306 0.14 31.8 21.2 WSlopeRoad 6.901 1.74 1.60 41.4 27.6 Slope 4.427 Sitapila SlopeRoad 4.830 0.40 29.0 19.3 WSlopeRoad 4.798 0.37 -0.03 28.8 19.2 except for Narayangopal Chowk again. The reason for a huge difference in Narayangopal Chowk routes was due to the high sloped roads between connecting stations and the presence of continuous housing and restricting areas, such as embassies, government offices etc. are around. According to the new World Bank(2013) report, Gender and Public Transport in Nepal, the most people stated that their journey times were between 15 and 30 minutes, and 90% of journeys took less than an hour. For cycling time computation, average urban bike travel velocities considered were 10km/hr & 15km/hr (Jensen et al., 2010). It indicates that the time to travel varied from 13 to 43 minutes(Table 2). However, it does not include the time required for the walk to and from station, waiting for public transportation, or the time consuming to find a parking spot for private vehicles. Hence, considering the simple one direction Fig. 8. Cycling routes

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5. Conclusion and Recommendation

The rapid urbanization in Kathmandu recently has only magnified the existing problems in the transportation, rendering enormous challenges that need to be dealt with. This study shows that it would take almost same time to cycle as to take the public transportation from the vicinities of Ring road. Thus, the cycling can be an effective alternative transportation for densely populated parts of Kathmandu valley. Besides the health and environmental benefits, adopting cycling will provide economical and independent travel to the daily commuters.

References

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622 Cycling: An Efﬁcient Solution to Rising Transportation Problems in Kathmandu

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