The chart above shows the kilometers of roads per square kilometer of land in EU states. No surprise that small states that are very urban in nature have more roads per square kilometer of territory.

Findings

The difference between the state with the greatest road coverage, Malta, and the state with the least, Finland, is 6.82 kilometers.

Malta has 31 times the road coverage that Finland has.

The five most paved states are located in the Southern, Western, and Eastern EU.

The five least paved states are located in the Eastern and Northern EU.

The mean kilometers of roadway per square kilometer of land is 1.65; the median is 1.31.

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.

Details

Romania not only has very few kilometers of road per every square kilometer of territory but also has the lowest road to rail ratio in the EU. Not exactly sure why this country has this unique characteristic, and it is unfortunate that Bulgaria, the state that would resemble Romania the most has incomplete roadway length data.

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 Estonia and slightly above Lithuania.

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.