The Bhutanese Leading the way.
The Department of Air Transport (DAT) in consultation with its ministry will declare parking zone three, below the airport cafeteria till the BCAA office, as a free parking area from 1st April. Currently the parking charges for zone three is Nu.20 for thirty minutes or less.
“After implementing the parking fee charges and designation of different zone areas we noticed that many drivers are now choosing to park their cars in zone four, which is a free zone, because of which the area is faced with severe congestion,” said DAT Director Karma Wangchuk. “So we are deciding to declare zone three as a free zone area like the fourth zone.”
With the declaration of zone three as a free parking area, there will be 300 free parking spaces for public at the airport.
It was deemed appropriate to declare zone three as a free zone after considering the high numbers of parking spaces in the area. Zone three has 179 parking spaces, zone two 37 and zone one 70 spaces.
Unlike the previous rules no charges will be levied at the drop zone at the departure terminal, whereby 2-3 minutes will be given for cars to drop the passengers and 5 minutes for buses.
The parking fee charges for zone one and two at the arrival terminal will not be altered because of the limited number of parking spaces available and mainly to effectuate decongestion around the two overcrowded areas.
Since it is DAT’s decision, in consultation with other stakeholders, to declare zone three as a free parking area DAT will be liable to pay USD Enterprise, the contractor for the collection of parking fees, the stated amount in the contract for zone three as the quotation was based zone wise.
Earlier USD was mandated to pay Nu.418,900 a month to DAT but after the deductions for zone three USD will now have to pay around Nu 200,000 a month to DAT.
Director Karma Wangchuk said that DAT is waiting for additional budget to expand zone one area, which is near the arrival terminal to make it more spacious and decongest the area fully. He said the works on the expansion of zone one should be completed by July this year.
