Global patterns of current and future road infrastructure

This resource explores global patterns of current and future road infrastructure, summarizing the Global Roads Inventory Project, which integrated ~60 datasets to produce a worldwide roads dataset covering 222 countries and over 21 million km. It relates road length to area, population density, GDP, and OECD membership, yielding a regression model (adjusted R2=0.90). Projections using SSP scenarios estimate 3.0–4.7 million km additional road length by 2050, with major increases in developing wilderness regions, emphasizing the need for accurate spatial road datasets.