Ukraine has a variety of road types within its road network. The roads are divided into two main categories: general-use roads, which consist of streets and roads in populated areas like cities and villages, and specialized roads, which include official, private, and special-use roads. The general use roadways are the main traveling routes and some better are part of the E-road network. High-speed highways (motorways), however, locally known as avtomahistrali or expressways (shvydkisni dorohy) are rare and only available on selected segments of major routes. Big construction projects to improve the national road infrastructure was announced in early 2010 in preparation to the Euro 2012 football competition and there was established Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine headed by Borys Kolesnikov. The reality turned out to be more prosaic, and the road infrastructure continues to required additional improvements.
Ukraine's network of roadways was inherited from the Ukrainian SSR (Soviet Ukraine), and during the Soviet period it was part of the bigger Soviet network of roadways. The modern network consists 99% of roads for public use with 12% assigned as of state importance and 87% - local importance. The whole network of all automobile roads (roadways) consists of some of which - have hard surface or 95.19%. The existing road network was mostly built (established) sometime in the 1960s and 1970s. For comparison, in 1940 the highway network of Ukraine consisted of 270,700 kilometers of which only 10.8% contained a paved surface.
Some critics point out that not only road conditions, but road safety is in complete disarray and the level of police corruption has not diminished after the recent reforms.
Since 2020, the big construction project named "Great Construction" is in full flow and since then, many roads have been reconstructed or renovated.
Overview
After the fall of the Soviet Union all road service state bodies within Ukraine were reorganized. The state agency Ukravtodor was established as a state corporation in 1990, replacing the Ministry of Roadways of Soviet Ukraine as the state governing body of automobile roads in modern Ukraine. It is supplemented by a project institute Ukrhiprodor which designs objects of road management. Ukravtodor is supervised by the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine. On February 28, 2002 by the Presidential order the state owned open stock company Avtomobilni dorohy Ukrainy (ADU) was created. The company was directly involved in road construction and maintenance. In 2016 ADU was merged into Ukravtodor, with the latter now owning 100% of its shares.
In 2015 the World Bank Group approved a US$560 million loan to improve road conditions in Ukraine particularly along the M03 route between Poltava and Kharkiv among others.
In 2016 many of Ukraine's major provincial highways were in very poor condition, with 97% of roads in need of repair at that time, according to Ukravtodor. This high figure was mostly a result of budget misallocations due to corruption, and lackluster weight restriction enforcement for trucks. In 2016 the road repair budget was set at about ₴20 billion. In 2017 the Groysman government began a three year large-scale renovation of Ukraine's motorway infrastructure, with the road budget climbing to ₴42 billion in 2018. In 2019, the annual road budget rose further to ₴51 billion, and reached a record high of ₴70 billion in 2020.
Ukraine's increased efforts at road maintenance and construction are showing tangible results. On the Quality of Roads Report of the World Economic Forum, Ukraine rose from 139th place in 2014 to 119th place in 2019, improving 20 places in five years.
Classifications
The state importance roads have the indexes M, H, P, T, each stand for the respective letter of Cyrillic. The state importance roads are utilized by the European E-network of highways.
The M-network of roads ( - International) along with H-network ( - National) range from 01 to 33 and consist of two digits. These roads are designed for the major transportation corridors across the country and the European highway system.
The P-network of roads ( - Regional) ranges from 01 to 84 and also is a combination of two digits.
The T-network ( - Territorial) of roads are part of territorial road network within the main subdivision of Ukraine (i.e. regions of Ukraine) and their index includes a combination of four digits with extra two indices to identify the region where a particular road is located.