r/Slovakia • u/Obcan_Statu • 5h ago
📈 Statistics 📈 How Slovakia built its roads (since 1993)
Slovakia became an independent state in 1993 with around 251 km of motorways and expressways. By 2026 it has added about 690 km, which means that 73% of today’s network was built after independence, for roughly 16.5 bn EUR in today’s money.
I was inspired by https://x.com/milos_gis/status/2104511906274832572 and mapped every section by its opening year. Railway network will be next.
It shows every section by the year it opened, with a running total of construction costs. The end of the video shows what is still under construction and what hasn’t been started yet.
Some numbers:
- Build pace: about 690 km added since 1993, around 20 km a year on average. The best year was 1998, with 80 km.
- Cost: about 16.5Bn EUR for the sections opened since 1993, around 24M EUR per km, both in 2026 prices. Tunnel-heavy sections cost much more: the D1 section with the Višňové tunnel (7.5 km, the longest in Slovakia) came to over 600M EUR.
- D1 highway is still not finished. The motorway between Bratislava and Košice has a 13.5 km gap at Turany-Hubová, with opening planned around 2034, tunnel Branisko has still only one tube finished. The 74 km from Košice to the Ukrainian border has not been started.
- Future: Only about 49% of the planned network of roughly 1.900 km is open. At the pace since 1993, 90% would be reached around 2064. At the faster 2007-2026 pace (24 km a year), it would be around 2058. I will let you decide if that is fast or slow.
Caveats:
- About 36% of the total cost is estimated from similar sections, because many 1990s and 2000s sections have no published price or missing data.
- Costs are converted to 2026 prices with the consumer price index, not a construction price index.
- Routes still to build are drawn schematically between the towns they will connect.
Data: OpenStreetMap (ODbL), Slovak Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).
Costs: NDS, ÚHP, NKÚ, EIB, press.