SPATIAL FEATURES OF THE ROAD NETWORK IN WESTERN UKRAINE

The road network is an important part of the transport system that ensures the operation of all industries, agriculture and social sphere. Road maintenance costs can be from 5 to 10% of the state budget per year. On the other hand, it should be noted that vehicle owners make significant contributions to the state budget of Ukraine through direct and indirect taxes. The road network has a lot of problems in terms of efficient functioning. One of the main problems is insufficient financing of road repair works. The aim of the study is to determine the spatial features of the road network of Western Ukraine, and the main task - to analyze, based on open data OpenStreetMap, the accessibility of the road network in the context of regions, districts and cities of regional subordination of Western Ukraine using the indicators the transport network density and the Engel’s coefficient. Due to the difficulty of accessing official statistics at the local level, both official statistics and open data from the OpenStreetMap mapping service were used. As a result of the research it was revealed: relatively even distribution over the territory, lack of sharp fluctuations in the availability level (the maximum and minimum value of the Engel’s coefficient differs only by 5.7 times); the most important roads (primary and secondary) connect regional centers and the largest cities with each other and with the state border; the largest road hub in Western Ukraine is the city of Lviv; among the districts, the highest accessibility of roads is observed in the western part of Volyn oblast, western and central parts of Chernivtsi oblast and southern part of Rivne oblast; increased concentration of roads in Precarpathian (an area of old industrial development); reduced concentration in the Ukrainian Carpathians and in the northeast of the region (north of Rivne region). In general, at the local level (districts, cities of regional subordination) the same patterns can be observed as at the regional level (regions).