It’s no secret that the Czech Republic is pretty bad at building motorways. At a Ministry of Regional Development conference, the economist Lukas Kovanda used numbers from Eurostat made it clear just how bad it is. Between 2000 and 2016, the number of kilometers of standard four-lane motorways in the Czech Republic rose by 60 percent to 790. In Poland, it grew by 358 percent to 1,640 and in Hungary by 329 percent. He added that it’s no use arguing that Poland has a lot more people than the Czech Republic either. In 2000, the number of kilometers per 100,000 people in the Czech Republic was 4.88, a figure that rose to just 7.47 by 2016. Hungary began at a similar level (4.32 km per 100,000 inhabitants) but by 2016 had shot up to 19.63. Poland’s starting point was just 0.94 but now stands at 4.32. Kovanda added that it’s not just the number of kilometers that is higher in Poland, but the quality as well. The Czech quality index rose over 16 years from 3.6 to 3.9. That’s a poor performance compared to Poland, which rose from just 2.6 to 4.3.
