Kathmandu, April 13

The government is set to review road routes across the country.

Summing up that public vehicles are not plying across a majority of routes as per requirement, the Department of Transport Management (DoTM) is preparing to conduct a comprehensive study of all road sections across the country and revisit them accordingly.

“There is a wide gap between the demand and available public vehicles across a majority of routes in the country. While some routes are flooded with public vehicles, their number is limited in others,” informed Rupnarayan Bhattarai, director general at DoTM, adding that a DoTM technical committee will study the public vehicle need assessment of all routes soon.

Once the study is completed, Bhattarai informed that the government will reshuffle necessary routes and issue vehicle route permits accordingly.

However, DoTM will hold a separate study of routes in urban and rural areas.

According to Bhattarai, massive reshuffling of routes and vehicle route permits will be carried out after the study committee submits its report.

“Once the study is completed, we will first review vehicle route permits in major road sections. We will issue new route permits on the road sections where the pressure of public commuters is high and withdraw vehicle route permits from the road sections where the demand for public vehicles is low,” added Bhattarai.

For the same purpose, DoTM has already sought necessary budget from the Ministry of Finance. As per Bhattarai, works regarding reviewing routes and vehicle route permits will be taken forward aggressively from the beginning of next fiscal year after the new budget guarantees necessary financial resources for the task.

Meanwhile, DoTM has already carried out the need assessment of different routes in Kathmandu Valley in coordination with Asian Development Bank. Bhattarai informed that road routes in the Valley will soon be reviewed on the basis of the study report.