Almaty is proposing a new tariff system for municipal parking that takes traffic load into account, the city administration said, according to infohub.kz.
The project aims to make parking spaces more accessible to residents and ease congestion in the most heavily used sections of the street and road network.
The current rate at municipal paid parking lots — 100 tenge per hour — has remained unchanged since 2016 and has not been revised for 10 years, officials noted. Over that period, the number of vehicles moving through Almaty has exceeded 1 million, significantly increasing the strain on the city's roads and parking space.
Yerzhan Dikhanbayev, head of the Almaty department for traffic management and passenger transport, said the flat rate has stopped serving its main purpose — ensuring parking turnover and the availability of free spaces, especially in central Almaty. As a result, he said, drivers are forced to spend more time searching for a free spot, which leads to more trips and additional pressure on the road network.
To address the problem, officials propose introducing a differentiated tariff system in which the cost of parking depends on traffic load and the functional purpose of a specific area.
"Under the draft, the rate will remain at 100 tenge per hour for areas with relatively low traffic load. For areas with medium intensity of parking space use, it will be 150 tenge per hour. And for the most in-demand zones with a high shortage of parking spaces and heavy traffic, it will be 200 tenge per hour," the department said.
Existing benefits for residents will be preserved. The city administration recalled that Almaty had previously approved rules for organizing road traffic (in the part not regulated by traffic rules), under which property owners living within the zone of paid parking can obtain a special permit and use parking spaces free of charge at a selected lot near their place of residence. Benefits also apply to a number of categories of users. The measure takes local residents' interests into account and provides them with comfortable conditions for using parking space.
According to the authors of the project, the proposed changes are aimed at more efficient management of parking space.
The project is expected to help reduce double-parking, cut the time spent searching for a free space, ease the traffic burden on central Almaty and create more comfortable conditions for all road users.