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
1) 2) 3)
Yang, In Tae · Acharya, Tri Dev · Shin, Moon Seung

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 : C
 ycling, Urbanization, Kathmandu, GIS

1. Introduction It consists of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Lalitpur districts.

Urbanization has been processed rapidly in most of
developing countries. It has been observed in Nepal from
the 1970s onward, showing one of the highest rates in Asia
and the Pacific (ADB/ICIMOD, 2006). Since the population
in Kathmandu valley is growing by 4 percents per year
with a population of 2.5 million people, it becomes the
most populated city in country, as well as one of the fastest
growing metropolitan in South Asia (Muzzini and Aparicio,
2013). Kathmandu valley is nearly round shape with
diameters of about 30 km east–west and 25 km north–south.
The reason for rapid and unplanned mushrooming of the city
is due to several factors, such as Maoist insurgency and Tarai
insecurity, lack of rural educational and health facilities,
educational and employment opportunities in the capital. It is
the first region in Nepal to face the unprecedented challenges
of rapid urbanization and modernization at a metropolitan
scale (Muzzini and Aparicio, 2013).
Among many, one of the emerging challenges is
transportation development inside the valley. Kathmandu
has not yet seen the modern bulk carrier transportation, such
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: intae@kangwon.ac.kr)
2) Corresponding Author, Member, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Kangwon National Univ., Korea (E-mail: tridevacharya@kangwon.ac.kr)
3) Member, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Kangwon National Univ., Korea (E-mail: sms6438@kangwon.ac.kr)

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.

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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,
vans, pickups, trucks, cars, tempo (three wheelers) and
motorcycles are the modes of transportation for services and
daily commuting in the city.
Fig. 1. Vehicle registration in Bagmati zone (DoTM, 2013)
Fig. 2. Travel mode share in 1991 and 2010 (CEN/UN-
Habitat, 2014)
According to Department of Transport Management
report, over the past 10 years motorization has increased
by 12% per year (Fig. 1) (DoTM, 2013), while the modal
share of public transport has remained stagnant (Fig. 2).
With increasing population and number of people owning
private vehicles, the roads becomes narrower, and more
time takes to commute. In fact, frequent traffic congestion,
fumes and excessive noise are shown possible consecutive
problems. It is challenging to finding a way into public
buses, microbuses, tempos and taxis, without mentioning
the actual overcrowded and uncomfortable journey. The
proposed solution from the government to accommodate
these challenges faces an uncertain fate due to land
acquisition disputes and higher compensation demanded by
locals for their property.
On the other hand, since the most of running vehicles are
fossil fueled, the price of fossil fuel is increasing sharply;
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however, the supply is limited. Long waiting lines are
common during crisis periods. In addition, greenhouse gas
and pollutants, emitted from these large numbers of vehicles,
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. 3. Cycle costs and benefits compared to other modes of
transports (SFMTA, 2013)
Compared to other modes of transports, the cycling has
many advantages (Fig. 3); it neither depends on the age nor
the income; it is healthy, cheap, environmentally friendly and
quiet, and also takes a little space (SFMTA, 2013; Transport
Learning, 2013). In addition, the cycling as a mode of urban
transportation results in health benefits, environmental
benefits and economic benefits (Castillo-Manzano and
Sánchez-Braza, 2013; Daley and Rissel, 2011; Florida,
2011; Rabl and De Nazelle, 2012; Woodcock et al., 2009).
According to the research in New Zeland (Macmillan et al.,
2014), System dynamic modeling shows transforming urban
roads using best practice of physical separation on main
roads and bicycle-friendly speed reduction on local streets
would yield benefits 10-25 times greater than costs, over next
40 years (Macmillan et al., 2014).
The purpose of study is to evaluate the potential of cycling
as an alternative mode of transportation based on time to
travel within the existing road infrastructure inside Ring
road, Kathmandu.
 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
important factor for cycling. The bicycle lane needs to be
designed around 2% but no more than 5%, the percentage
slope map derived from topographic maps, is divided into
three categories: >5%, 2-5% and 0-2% in the order of least
favorable (Table 1). Being the valley, it’s obvious to have the
central plane areas whereas the peripherals shows the high
slope.
The importance of land is very high in Kathmandu, so the
new lane construction or expansion is very difficult here.
By considering the situation, we have applied existing roads
as input. The OSM road networks were firstly got rid of the
Bridleway, Service roads, Steps raceway and railway, which
are inappropriate for cycling. Then the rest class of road
network is divided into three categories (Table 1).
In order to determine the routes, the study considers the
Ratnapark as a central destination of purely slope, slope &
road, and weighted Slope & road scenarios. The first slope
based route is determined purely by the existing topography
to know a path with the least slopes. The second condition
follows the same rules but only through the existing roads,
which expects to be longer length. In fact, the cycling in
busy primary and secondary roads is not safer by accounting
of accidents and air pollutants and spending time in traffic
signals. Therefore, in third condition, the roads are given
30% weightage as well as the priority to inner residential
and tertiary roads. This could save time and give smooth ride
experience.
The methodology comes out with three different cycling
cost scenarios by overlaying the thematic maps, weighted
overlay methods using the spatial analysis tool in ArcGIS 9.2.
During the weighted overlay analysis, the ranking has been
given for each individual parameter of each thematic map,
so as the weightage was assigned according to the influence
of different parameters that presents in Table 1. The rank
determines the ease to difficult states of cycling condition 1
to 3, respectively.
The Cost Distance tool was used to calculate the least
accumulative cost distance from each cell to the nearest over
each cost surfaces. Finally the least cost path tool was used
to calculate the least cost paths from different stations to a
destination.
4. Results and Discussion
In this study, the result (Fig. 8) shows that the most of
route length differences by purely slope costs are within
a kilometer, except Narayangopal Chowk (Table 2).
Addionally, those differences in route lengths between
SlopeRoad and WSlopeRoad are much similar and shorter,

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 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
Length Time (min.) @ Time (min.) @
Stations Type Length with Length with
(km) 10km/hr 15km/hr
Slope SlopeRoad
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 23.0
SlopeRoad 5.746 0.96 34.5
(Tinkune)
WSlopeRoad 5.647 0.86 -0.10 33.9 22.6
Slope 6.115
Lagankhel SlopeRoad 7.316 1.20 43.9 29.3
(MahaLakshmi)
WSlopeRoad 6.859 0.74 -0.46 41.2 27.4
Slope 5.164
NarayanGopal SlopeRoad 5.306 0.14 31.8 21.2
Chowk
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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Fig. 9. Optimum cycling route with river network
distance and lesser time to commute in Kathmandu, favors
the cycling.
Furthermore, if banks of river networks are started to use
for cycling, it can serve the dual purposes in transportation
and recreation (Fig. 9).
Also if, the destination in Ringroad was merged with river
crossings, it can minimize construction cost.
Unfortunately, there is neither the high resolution DEM nor
the road network database for precise calculation of cycling
routes. In websites of MapMyRide and EveryTrail, we could
observe few cycling activities were done in the valley, only
for the recreation purpose. This study might be the first to
consider the cycling as the daily commuting transportation
for the city. From related data, the cycling routes can be more
optimized for two-way cycling based on slope and aspect,
human power cost etc.
Although this study shows promising cycling scopes, there
are some profound risks following to bad states of roads and
unsecured driving culture, as well as polluted atmosphere,
since Kathmandu valley had the highest level of air pollution
in Nepal (Shrestha et al., 2012). For those reasons, the roads
still seem difficult and dangerous for cycling without supports
and committed actions from the authorities to reorganize and
clean up the urban roads.
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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.
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