Shosse Rossii - N6 Design Co.

Shosse Rossii (Шоссе России)

About

This is a project that began in the spring of 2015 in order to fix and redevelop a major infrastructure design problem. I felt that the road network in Russia is really unorganized and terribly managed, so I developed a system of signage for the network and created a hierarchy of roads. Road designations don't make sense and the system is of classification is highly unfriendly towards users. It's unnecessarily complicated.

Unfortunately, this will never be implemented because of the impossible corruption problem and the Russian government's lack of care about its citizens or the comfort of their facilities.

A way to build and improve the overall road infrastructure of the country could be using the labour of political prisoners of the current regime, assuming that this project happens in a democratic and westernized Russia. All the people in the current government who would be tried for political crimes could be forced to do hard labour in the form of improvement of roads. It would be a waste of manpower to execute such people.

As of June 2020, a new, decentralized system of road management is being developed in order to simplify the system of designations that would include bilingual signage to more closely resemble the French system of hierarchy. It is called Shosse Rossii: DIN.

"Our roads...across all of Russia; From Kaliningrad to Nakhodka, we care about our drivers and the roads on which they travel."

The first commercial advertisement for Shosse Rossii, a fictional competitor company to the state entity of Rosavtodor which looks after and maintains Russia's road infrastructure.

The Company

Throughout the process, I've created a competitor company to the already existing state-owned G.K. Avtodor* and the state entity Rosavtodor**: Shosse Rossii (Шоссе России, Russian Highways). As a parallel to this project, I've began to develop a brand identity for the company.

*G.K. Avtodor is a state-owned corporation that in charge of building and maintaining toll federal highways (for instance, the M11 "Neva").

**Rosavtodor is a branch of the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation, and as such, deals with the maintenance of free public federal highways.

Старый логотип компании «Шоссе России» 2015 г.

Shosse Rossii original logo from 2015

Новый логотип компании «Шоссе России» на 2018 г.

Shosse Rossii's new logo as of 2018

The front page of the website (images sourced from Rosavtodor).

Мобильная версия сайта компании «Шоссе России»

The website, as it would appear on an iOS device.

Signage Design

Originally, I based the signage style on that of Spain, with blue meaning motorway sections. After months of revision and consideration, I eventually changed the motorway colour to green, as in Finland and Eastern Europe.

Nevertheless, I kept the colour-coding system used in Spain where places and names highlighted in various colour mean something.

Orange signifies sports structures, such as stadiums.
Yellow signifies transportation infrastructure, such as railway stations and airports.
Green signage indicates that the road is a motorway.
Blue signage indicates a conventional road.
Grey signifies industrial complexes and factories.
Black signifies military installations and bases.*
Brown indicates cultural places of interest.

Style guide for signage layout.

Network

In my development I have expanded the current network consisting of M-roads. Currently, the only roads that have an M-prefix are the ones that directly lead to Moscow. Unfortunately, due to an amendment passed in 2010, all other former M-roads changed and now have either P- (Cyrillic R) and A-suffixes. I returned the original M-prefixes and designated new ones to other important connecting roads.

Motorway and Limited Access Network

Using the new Finnish style (Style 2), I created created a map of the sections of federal roads that would have the status of motorways and limited access, divided roads (LARs). Since Russia is a colossally huge country, goods and other things that require logistics throughout the country require a good network of high-speed roads.

I must note here that, although it looks as if I planned a really dense network of motorways and LARs, it is actually very sparse in comparison with networks such of those of France, Germany, or even Spain. Still expensive, though.

GALLERY: see the maps full size.

Just the limited access sections highlighted.

Just the motorway sections highlighted.

Live Mapping the Network

As an experiment, I've mapped all the controlled-access segments in the Moscow Oblast to visualize the rapid expansion of Moscow's urban and suburban expressways. However, this doesn't mean that these the status of these roads is necessarily reflected on signage; this comes from visual inspection.

Many roads here are needed and have been built without regret, others (especially future projects) seem anachronistically thought out in terms of what a city needs and doesn't need (are we building for cars or people?).

Moscow's true treasure lies just outside of the MKAD – its forests. Although it is difficult to say yes to cutting down forest for the sake of a road, many of these roads do need to be built, mostly due to the outdated and substandard sections built decades ago which can no longer be widened. All I ask is that they're planned efficiently. If we're going to tear down forest, why not try to save the most we can?

For a lack of legend, here are what the colours mean:

Green – Motorway section

Blue – Limited access road/urban expressway (bus stops and tighter turns allowed)

Orange – Planned and proposed controlled-access sections, a few by me, others by city or federal authorities.

(Click/tap sections to interact)

Toll roads

Toll roads are very limited in Russia for now but because of the construction of the new M11 "Neva" motorway from Moscow to St. Petersburg, the network is expanding.

Formerly, green was used to indicate toll roads; now it is used to indicated motorways.

An example of toll road overhead sign on the M11 on the way to St. Petersburg.

A map of the planned toll network using the new Finnish style.

Welcome sign upon entry onto a federal highway (non-motorway).

Road types

The Shosse Rossii shield collection, featuring all the new road types.

Listed in order, top to bottom:

Main federal roads They make up the major network of roads spanning the country.

Secondary roads They are less major roads that connect large towns and cities.

Rural roads They are the most minor roads which connect small villages and towns.

Ring roads Ring and bypass roads.

Motorways High-speed roads that span across the country.

Some examples of kilometre markers.

Numbering System

In the Soviet Union, non-M roads were numbered by Republics (RSFSR was 100s; Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, and the Baltic states were 200s; central Asia were 300s).

Here, I've created a system where the road numbers fall under each Federal District. Each road can have a four-digit branch so that more numbers are available. For instance, A555 can have branches A5551 through A5559.

This is meant to organize numbering, not jurisdiction. Road numbers aren't strictly defined by federal district; they can cross into neighbouring ones.