Where Are the World’s Fastest Roads?
IMF Blog, June 15, 2022
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- Where Are the World’s Fastest Roads?
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Bibliographic details
- Authors: Mariano Moszoro, Mauricio Soto
- Published: June 15, 2022
Methodology
- IMF staff developed a novel measure of road quality across 162 countries using Google Maps to determine the mean, or average, time it takes to drive between large cities that are at least 80 kilometers (50 miles) apart.
- Simplicity is a main feature of our score: average speeds are easy to calculate and simple to monitor frequently.
- The metric is inexpensive and can complement other connectivity metrics that rely on satellites or surveys.
Key findings
- As the Chart of the Week shows, the world’s fastest roads are found in richer economies including the United States, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Canada.
- The slowest roads are found in the poorest countries—another obstacle to inclusive growth.
- Our research shows that road quality is highly correlated with travel times.
Limitations and caveats
- Speed does not capture road safety, the availability of alternate forms of transport such as rail, or congestion during peak hours or seasons (when farmers might all take to the roads at once to get their produce to markets).
- Average speeds might not fully capture the engineering challenges of building quality roads in diverse and difficult terrain.
- It is difficult to distill road quality into a single statistic.
Policy implications and uses
- The simple metric can support policymakers and planners in assessing their road infrastructure relative to peer countries and the value of future road investments.
- The measure can be easily extended to monitor speeds in smaller roads that can be critical for many in rural areas.
- This can help countries design policies to overcome road bottlenecks and improve their competitiveness by moving people and goods more expeditiously.
Mariano Moszoro, Mauricio Soto — June 15, 2022