# Where the asphalt ends Romania has 87,220 km of public road. On 20,959 of them, one kilometre in four, nothing bound with bitumen or cement was ever laid: they are gravel or bare earth. On national roads the unsurfaced share is 0.7%; on county and communal roads it is 30.2%. Of the 20,959 unsurfaced kilometres, 20,825, or 99.4%, are county or communal. Unsurfaced kilometres fell from 39,062 in 2000 to 20,959 in 2025, and the fall happened almost entirely on the local network. - **20,959 km** gravel or bare earth at the end of 2025 - **99.4%** of the unsurfaced kilometres are county or communal roads - **0.7% vs 30.2%** — unsurfaced share on national roads, against county and communal roads - **49.8% → 24.0%** — share of the public network with no surfacing, in 2000 and now ## The four surface classes, 2025 | Class | Kilometres | Share | | --- | --- | --- | | Modernised (asphalt or cement concrete; includes 1,268 km of motorway) | 45,806 | 52.5% | | Light bituminous surfacing (a thinner bound layer) | 20,455 | 23.5% | | Gravel (macadam, no binder on top) | 14,018 | 16.1% | | Bare earth (the earthworks, nothing on top) | 6,941 | 8.0% | In 2000, 49.8% of the network had no surfacing. Gravel roads fell from 26,633 km to 14,018 km, earth roads from 12,429 km to 6,941 km. The modernised class grew by 26,388 km while the network as a whole lengthened by only 8,741 km. ## The two networks, 2025 | Network | Length | Unsurfaced | Share | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | National roads | 18,193 km | 134 km | 0.7% | | County and communal roads | 69,027 km | 20,825 km | 30.2% | A kilometre of county or communal road is 41 times more likely to be gravel or earth than a kilometre of national road. National roads were already 90.6% modernised in 2000, so little was left to do there. Of the 26,388 km added to the modernised class between 2000 and 2025, 22,347, or 84.7%, are county and communal roads. The local network rose from 9.4% modernised to 41.0%. ## Counties with the highest gravel-or-earth share of the local network, 2025 | County | Share | Kilometres | Was in 2000 | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Harghita | 54.6% | 896 of 1,642 | 72.5% | | Vrancea | 49.3% | 627 of 1,273 | 63.8% | | Argeș | 46.9% | 1,369 of 2,916 | 70.6% | | Brașov | 46.2% | 519 of 1,123 | 51.5% | | Bacău | 45.6% | 913 of 2,000 | 68.2% | | Constanța | 45.5% | 835 of 1,834 | 49.0% | At the other end: Ilfov 7.1%, Brăila 9.3%, Teleorman 10.4%, Olt 10.7%. Brăila and Teleorman are the only two counties with no bare-earth county or communal road left: Brăila since 2017, Teleorman since 2021. The ten counties holding the most unsurfaced kilometres add up to 45.7% of the total, and the largest single holding, Argeș, is 6.6%. The pace varied widely: Vaslui came down from 78.5% to 20.6% in twenty-five years, Iași from 75.6% to 23.1% and Cluj from 69.2% to 22.1%, while Tulcea came down only from 45.5% to 42.3%, Constanța from 49.0% to 45.5% and Brașov from 51.5% to 46.2%. On the county and communal network, unsurfaced kilometres fell from 38,841 in 2000 to 20,825 in 2025, about 720 km a year. At that pace, finishing would take roughly twenty-nine more years. That is an extrapolation rather than a forecast: it assumes the pace holds, the network stops lengthening, and no surfaced kilometre degrades back. ## City streets For town streets the statistical office publishes only total length and the modernised part, so "not modernised" covers light bituminous surfacing, gravel and earth together. The 319 towns with both figures for 2025 hold 32,465 km of street, of which 75.6% is modernised, up from 57.5% in 1990, when 259 towns reported both figures. Sixteen towns have their whole network modernised; the town of Ștefănești in Botoșani county has 8 km modernised out of 64. ## Method and sources Public road length comes from matrix TRN139A of Romania's National Institute of Statistics (updated 20 May 2026, downloaded 10 September 2026); town streets from GOS104A and GOS105A (updated 27 August 2026). The four surface classes are published separately only from 2000 onwards. The county and communal network is calculated as total network minus national roads, verified identical to the published figure across all 1,404 county-year cells for total, modernised and light surfacing; for 2003, where the published gravel and earth values are wrong in all 54 territorial units, the subtraction restores them. A row missing from the table means zero. County outlines: geo-spatial.org and ANCPI, CC BY-SA 4.0. The data describes the type of surfacing laid on a road rather than its current condition, and says nothing about how many people use each kilometre. Romanian edition: