The transport network of Russia mapped
Automobile roads in Russia were historically established back in the days of the Russian Empire as a network of postal routes. In Soviet times they were replaced by highways.
Nowadays, the transport network in Russia is one of the world’s most large transport systems. The national web of roads, railways, and airways stretches about 7,700 kilometers (4,800 miles) from Kaliningrad in the west to the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy in the east.
The total length of the Russian network of public roads was estimated by Rosstat at 1,396,000 km (867,434 miles), including 984,000 km (611,429 miles) of paved roads.
The map below shows the road network of Russia.
The European part of Russia with high population density has the highest road density, decreasing to north and east. The density of roads in the Siberian and Far Eastern Federal Districts is the lowest, and many of them are not connected to the federal network. About 10% of the population live in regions with no access to the network of year-round operated roads.
The configuration of the road network in the European part of the country is star-shaped, inherited from the network of the cart roads of the Russian Empire: all the main roads diverge by rays from Moscow. This topology of the network is a consequence of weak horizontal links between cities and regions of the country.
Nevertheless, due to its sheer size, Russia sufferers from lacking roads in many parts of the country. As an example, below is a map of the road density of Russia and Finland’s border areas.
