To travel to a place, people need a vehicle as their transportation. If you are asked about transportation that is common in your country, what is your answer? Sometimes the answers of everyone in a particular country can be different from each other.
Each country certainly has certain common transportation that is often used by residents to travel. There are many factors that make people more interested in using public transportation compared to private vehicles.
Then, what kind of transportation is commonly used in the Soviet Union? People who do not know about it, would be wondering about what kind of transportation used in the Soviet Union.
In order for you to know about the usual transportation used in the Soviet Union, let’s look at the commonly used transportation in Soviet Union.
Every period in a country usually has certain transportation that is commonly used by citizens of that country for daily activities. There are many things that can make transportation in the past and present have differences. Along with the development of an increasingly modern era, transportation also adjusts.
When the Soviet Union era, in the late 1970s to early 1980s, many experts’ economists in the Soviet Union which calls for more road construction to reduce the density. This can be used to increase the state budget. Because at that time, the highway was still underdeveloped and there were still many ordinary dirt roads scattered outside the big cities in the Soviet Union. At the same time, the automotive industry in the Soviet Union grew faster when compared to the growth of new road construction.
As with the existing transportation in Russia today is slightly different from transportation in the former Soviet Union. There are also improvements, both from facilities, types of transportation to ticket prices to use public transportation. Maybe many of you don’t know about the transportation that is commonly used in the Soviet Union. Therefore, in this article we will discuss 4 commonly used transportation in Soviet Union.
- Airplane
The area in the Soviet Union was quite large at that time. The area reaches one sixth of all land on earth. Therefore, the government in the Soviet Union invested in air transportation. They assume if it will make the trip faster because the roads in the Soviet Union at that time were not so good. Very few Soviet citizens who have private cars.
There are still many areas in the Soviet Union that cannot be easily accessed. Many expanses of land are large but do not have adequate roads to go through land transportation such as buses for example. The railway line is also still rare and if there is any it is very far away. Such area is in the northern and eastern parts of the Soviet Union. For this reason, the Soviet Union built a number of airports which were spread to even the most isolated parts of the country.
- Train
The Soviet Union also has a railway. The non-industrial rail network in the Soviet Union has a length of 147,000 kilometers. This makes the train an alternative transportation for their daily activities. Railroad transportation at that time became a solution to reduce congestion on busy roads. Although at the time, the quality of rail transport is still deteriorating.
Increased investment for rail and new train systems began to be decided in 1931. Until finally, rail transportation in the Soviet Union became one of the most developed in the world. The effectiveness of railroad use increases over time. Many citizens of the Soviet Union do not have private vehicles, preferring to use the train.
- Bus
When in the Soviet Union, very few people owned private cars. That’s why the citizens of the Soviet Union to use public transport for their daily activities or to take a trip to somewhere. The existing road still has poor quality. One other option that is often used by residents is buses.
Public transportation uses buses in the Soviet Union, centered and controlled by the Ministry of Transportation at that time. In the 1980s, the Government of the Soviet Union began to undertake a gas-compressed alternative fuel program for their buses. That is done so that transportation is more environmentally friendly and uses less fuel. Until 1988, only around 1.2% used gas while 30% used diesel.
- Ship
Other transportation options that can be an alternative for Soviet citizens as public transportation are ships. The Soviet Union has around 26 main ports. Although there is no port in the Soviet Union that can be considered a world standard. The Russian Empire made the construction of new shipbuilding facilities as a center of its investment in large part. Because of the cold climate, many ports in the northeastern part of the Soviet Union were closed.
Of the 26 main ports in the Soviet Union, 11 of them are land ports. There are total of 70 port units. Marine transportation and marine industries in the Soviet Union under the control of the Ministry of the Merchant Marine Fleet of the USSR.
Although there are many improvements in transportation that exist in the Soviet Union, there are still many deficiencies in making it happen. There are still obsolete infrastructures, large amounts of corruption, lack of investment, and various other factors that make transportation improvements less than optimal at that time. The government of the Soviet Union has in fact not been able to meet the increasing public demand for transportation services.
And maybe there are still some of commonly used transportation in Soviet Union that haven’t been listed above. I hope this article can really help you to find out the commonly used transportation in Soviet Union. If you live in that era, which do you think is the best transportation?