District Transport Master Plans: how Nepal plans its rural roads

A District Transport Master Plan (DTMP) is Nepal’s district-level road plan. The wider topic is in the rural roads hub; the building itself is in how rural roads are built.

What a DTMP is

The Green Road Concept lists preparing a District Transport Master Plan among its principles, with a long-term vision of the national, interdistrict, district and village roadway, trail, air, water and cableway networks³. The preparation is participatory³, and the road net is to be planned to maximise access to settlements in a conservation-oriented way³. The concept also names a decision-making District Roads Coordination Committee and an executive District Technical Office³.

The Ministry of Local Development gave the main purpose of the update as drawing up a clear picture of the road network¹.

Why it was updated

The updating was set out by the Ministry of Local Development, which planned to update the existing master plan in all 75 districts because implementation of the earlier plan was ineffective, and random roads had been constructed in various districts without meeting technical standards¹. DoLIDAR’s aim was to identify access roads to highways and halt random urban road construction¹.

The causes:

• Village development committees started issuing road construction budgets for roads not identified under the master plan¹.
• Frequent changes of government produced multiple and non-technical urban roads¹.
• The increasing size of development budgets, together with a shortage of technical manpower, led to roads that do not meet technical criteria¹.
• The ministry on average records up to 15 urban road construction proposals every day¹.

The update also includes basic training for dozer users and orientation of urban communities¹.

Where it was done

DoLIDAR was updating the plan in 30 districts, with assistance from the Rural Access Improvement Project funded by the World Bank¹. DoLIDAR had already completed the update in seven pilot districts, under the Road Access Program (RAP) funded by the British Government’s Department for International Development¹.

The seven pilot districts were Morang, Jhapa, Shankhuwasabha, Sindhupalchowk, Parbat, Dadeldhura and Dailekh¹. Two of them have guides here: Dadeldhura and Dailekh.

The core network

The Nepal Rural Road Standards were revised in 2010 while interim DTMP guidelines were prepared for the pilot districts². In March 2012 the Nepal Road Sector Assessment Study was completed, with recommendations to simplify the DTMP so that it is easier to understand, cheaper to implement and less time consuming². Its conclusion was that investment in the local road network should concentrate on upgrading to a core network of maintainable, all-weather roads².

That core network is the minimum network necessary to ensure maintainable, all-weather access to every village headquarters; where a headquarters is not yet connected, new roads will need to be constructed, and all roads outside the core network become village roads². A district road on the core network is an important road joining a village headquarters, or the nearest economic centre, to the district headquarters, through a neighbouring district headquarters or the strategic road network². The design rules for these roads are covered in how rural roads are built, and their upkeep in road maintenance groups.

From district to municipality

Municipalities have their own version. A Municipal Transport Master Plan (MTMP) is defined in the Suryabinayak Municipality document as the process of identifying, classifying and prioritising roads, with a financial budget⁴. It maps and classifies the existing network, sets a vision, identifies the interventions needed (new construction, upgrading, rehabilitation or maintenance), ranks them and prepares a physical and financial plan⁴. The approach is bottom-up and participatory from the settlement level⁴.

The Suryabinayak plan covers five years, with interventions planned for that period and implemented annually⁴. A medium-term plan addresses 10 years and a long-term plan 20 years⁴. The cost estimates cover maintenance, upgrading, rehabilitation and new construction of main trails, bridges and roads⁴, which links the plan to trail bridges.

A Karnali example: Siddha Kumakha

Siddha Kumakha Rural Municipality in Salyan, Karnali, has a Rural Municipality Transport Master Plan dated March 2019⁵. Nepal’s new local administrative structure of 753 local units was implemented on 12 March 2017, and the six VDCs merged into the municipality had a population of 13,593 at the 2011 census⁵.

The plan separates road classes by function: Class C and D roads deal mainly with access, while Class A and B roads deal with mobility and access to higher services⁵.

The national picture in 2016

Nepal’s country presentation at the Tenth Regional Environmentally Sustainable Transport Forum in Asia, held on 14-16 March 2016 in Vientiane, listed a District Transport Master Plan for 75 districts among its major initiatives and plans⁶. It gave the strategic road network as 15,000 km and the local road network as 60,000 km⁶. On the strategic network, more than 50% was gravel or earthen, and upgrading it to blacktop demanded huge investment⁶. Local roads were constructed with poor geometry and demand huge investment to assure all-weather access⁶. Implementation of the District Transport Master Plan is listed as a major investment decision to improve connectivity⁶.