Paul Goble
Staunton, April 7 – Kazakhstan has announced plans to modernize and expand its highway network both to integrate that Central Asia country more completely and to play a key role in international trade both east-west between China and Europe and north-south between Russia and the Indian Ocean.
Most of the countries in the former Soviet space have focused on railways and to a lesser extent on air routes. In this, they have followed the pattern of the Russian Federation which relative to the size of the country has the most under-developed highway system of any country on earth.
But Kazakhstan has adopted a different approach, one driven both by its own domestic needs and by its recognition of the problems of intermodal trade that have slowed Russian routes where the requirement to change the gage of railways from international standards to Russian ones remains a serious bottleneck.
Last month, Astana announced that it plans to widen existing roads from two lane to four lane and to ensure that all of them have regular service stations and internet connectivity and to build new roads to connect existing ones (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2026-03-19--kazahstan-usilivaet-pozicii-na-karte-evrazijskoj-logistiki-novyj-plan-razvitija-avtodorog-do-2028-goda-86558).
Russian commentators are impressed, an indication that Moscow too may increase the role of highways in domestic integration and international transit, thus reversing a situation in which roads like fools are two of that country’s greatest problems (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2026-04-07--kazahstan-zapuskaet-novyj-plan-razvitija-avtodorog-radi-usilenija-evrazijskoj-logistiki-86913).
One of the most impressive features of Kazakhstan’s plans is its intention to upgrade and build highways with concrete rather than macadem and to ensure that the ground under the roads is far more compacted than the Soviet and Russian approach had used. If Astana succeeds, its roads will carry heavier loads and last longer than their Russian counterparts.
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