Kilometers of Roadway per Square Kilometer of Land in EU Regions

Apr 5, 2018
Chart of Road Length per Square Kilometer of Land in EU Regions

The chart above shows the kilometers of roads per square kilometer of land in EU regions.  The Northern EU, with its vast expanses of land, is the least paved region per square kilometer.  It is also the only region that has less than half of a kilometer of road per every square kilometer of territory.

Findings

  • The difference between the region with the greatest road coverage, the Western EU, and the region with the least, the Northern EU, is 1.44 kilometers.
  • The Western EU has four times the road coverage that the Northern EU has.
  • Only the Western and Southern EU have more than one kilometer of paved land per every square kilometer of territory.

Caveats

  • Road length data is from 2008 except for Denmark which is from 2006, and Italy and Portugal which are from 2005.
  • Area data is from 2007.
  • Road and area data come from different sources.
  • Bulgaria is not included because it did not have complete data in the road data set.
  • The Western EU consists of Germany, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Ireland, and Luxembourg.
  • The Southern EU consists of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, and Malta.
  • The Eastern EU consists of Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria (not included), Croatia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
  • The Northern EU consists of Sweden, Denmark, and Finland.

Details

This chart simply shows that the Western EU is a far more urban region than the others as can be seen from the national data.  What is interesting though is that even though the Northern EU is the least paved, it also has the least number of vehicles registered per kilometer of roadway.

The number of kilometers of roadway per square kilometer of land for the European Union as a whole is 1.24 which ranks it just below the Southern EU and above the Eastern EU.

Sources

European Union Road Federation.  2011.  "European Road Statistics 2011."  Accessed March 12, 2018.  http://www.irfnet.eu/images/stories/Statistics/2011/ERF-2011-STATS.pdf.

United Nations.  2007.  "United Nations Statistics Division - Environment Statistics."  Accessed January 23, 2018.  https://unstats.un.org/unsd/environment/totalarea.htm.

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