Just How Bad are Russian Roads? ‘Novyye Izvestiya’ Assembles the Numbers

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 13 – Roads in Russia are notoriously bad, the result of a combination of climate, corruption, backward technologies, and a budgetary system that means those who build roads they will soon have to repair will make more than those who build highways that will last. Just how bad have long been the subject of anecdotes. Now, Novyye izvestiya gives the numbers. 

            The data the paper assembles (newizv.ru/article/tilda/13-03-2019/dorogi-rossii-realnost-i-obeschaniya) go a long way to proving that the anecdotes people tell about Russia’s roads – the potholes which swallow trucks and the places to which no one can drive – are all too real. Among the most striking of the numbers are the following:

·         Despite being more than twice the size of the US, Russia today has almost 80 percent fewer kilometers of roadways than does the North American country.

·         Average speeds on major highways are only two percent that of those in the US.

·         Russian highway fatalities ae 6.5 times the rate per million of population compared to Great Britain.

·         97 percent of roads in Moscow meet basic standards while in some places like Arkhangelsk Oblast 96 percent don’t, but the Kremlin plans to spend more on improvements in the former than in the latter.

·         Russia has so many potholes in its roads that the government even has a pothole standard: Officially no pothole is to go unrepaired if it exceeds 15 centimeters in length, 60 centimeters in width, and five centimeters in depth. For roads of local importance, there are supposed to be no more than 2.5 square meters per 1000 square meters of road surface with pothole damage, except in the springtime when the number is allowed to rise to 7 square meters.

·         But despite these shortcomings, Russia now spends on federal highways 50 percent more per kilometer of new construction as does the US, 202 million rubles (three million US dollars) compared to 127 million rubles (two million US dollars).

·         In a country with few good roads in most of it, the most expensive road in the world, Russian experts say, is the Moscow ring road: each kilometer of it costs on average 578 million US dollars.

·         Corruption adds to these costs: While each project is probably only about 10 percent higher than it would be if corruption were eliminated, the system allows multiple projects for each length of road and therefore the total amount of corruption is massively higher.

·         The Putin regime’s highway construction plans are not going to help most Russians: Those in Moscow and the larger cities may benefit; those elsewhere will not. Indeed, they may be even worse off in 2024 than they are now. According to government figures, the share of all roads in Russia located in major cities will grow from 42 percent in 2018 to 85 percent in 2024.