Roads of Kazakhstan need improvement and bold expansion. The need of the economy for the development of the international automobile transport system dictates the need for both preserving the quality of roads and upgrading them to international standards. The poor condition of the road surface leads to a decrease in operating speeds, an increase in operational transport costs, and an increase in accident rate.
Roads today are the leading mode of transport in the national transportation of goods by volume. Roads make up the lion's share of the total freight traffic (over 85% of the total freight traffic in 2015).
Road freight transport accounts for 30% of the cargo turnover (ton / km) in the country. This is due to the short distance transported by road (48 km) compared with rail (800 km).
It is worth noting that freight traffic is gradually shifting from rail to road, as the share of roads continues to grow. This requires an increase in road capacity, which we have seen in recent years based on rising infrastructure costs.
The road network has about 96,000 km and is of international importance for communication with Asian and European highways. The length of 86,000 km is paved, and almost 10,000 km remains unpaved. Kazakhstan ranks 46th in terms of road length in the world. The density of the road network per 1000 km² is 32.4 km of paved roads. This is compared with the density of the transport network in Russia 53 km per 1000 km².
Contributing to the economic growth that the transport system makes, Kazakhstan has become an active participant in global integration processes and has paid great attention to developing a good transport infrastructure with a high level of service. As a result, it was planned to repair or build about 7,000 km of roads in 2015-2019 in accordance with the Nurly-Zhol program.
In 2016, the reconstruction of 924 km of the national road was completed. It was planned to open the road for traffic on sections of the Kazakhstan section of the Western Europe-Western China highway, the Center-South, namely Astana-Temirtau, Almaty-Kapchagai. In 2017, it is planned to reconstruct more than 2,000 km of the national road, including the Center-East corridor and others. The goal of the Western Europe-Western China highway construction project is to organize an international transcontinental automobile corridor connecting the port of Lianyungang - St. Petersburg and Europe. The construction of the road on the Chinese stretch of 3425 km was completed, while Russia delays the project (the length of its part of the route is 2233 km) and promises to complete the reconstruction by 2020. The lack of synchronization of the actions of the project partner reduces its effectiveness.
Thus, it can be concluded that in Kazakhstan the quality of roads is improving and measures are being taken to develop interstate projects, which contribute to long-term and comfortable transportation.
