In the EU, governments invest around EUR 112 billion a year in transport. These investments are mostly dedicated to building and maintaining roads.
This paper shows that road lengths still tend to be lower in less developed Member States both per capita and per square kilometre.
Rural regions and areas have significantly higher road lengths per capita, but their road performance is lower due to their dispersed population.
Increasing road length per capita has a positive impact on the road performance, but the benefits are larger in urban regions compared to rural ones.
The impact of an additional kilometre of motorway is far greater than that of secondary or local roads.
In addition to the length of the road network, a number of other factors influence road performance, including the completeness of the motorway network, the design and quality of the network and geographical obstacles such as mountains and large rivers.
Policy recommendations should consider the impact of new roads not only on road performance, but also on environmental and climate goals within a multi-modal framework.