IT WILL be the longest stretch of road inside a single country in the world. When 1,350 miles of gravel highway are completed next spring, drivers will be able to make the ultimate road trip: Moscow to Vladivostok.

The journey of 5,300 miles will dwarf America’s legendary Route 66, that runs from Chicago to Los Angeles and the West Coast, which is a mere 2,400 miles.

From Moscow the road will lead across European Russia, over the Ural Mountains, through the vast forests of central Siberia, around the southern tip of Lake Baikal and along the Chinese border, ending eight time zones later at the warm waters of the Sea of Japan in Vladivostok.

The Soviet and later Russian authorities have long dreamt of completing the missing link between the city of Chita, 200 miles northwest of the border intersection between Russia, China and Mongolia, and Khabarovsk, 400 miles north of Vladivostok.

The road has been mooted since the mid-1960s, but the plan was repeatedly shelved because of the cost and climatic conditions. Several towns along the route can now be reached easily only by train or air.

Under a decree issued by President Putin the first stage will see the gravel-covered through-road open by the end of March next year. By 2008 that road will have a hard surface. Apart from its length, the Chita-Khabarovsky highway presents formidable civil engineering challenges. The mainly mountainous route will need more than 250 bridges, many of which will have to be built from scratch.

It will cross up to 50 different types of soil, including some permafrost. Throughout the year temperatures range through 100 degrees Centigrade, from more than 40C to below -50C.

“It is important to keep the thermal balance so the road does not fall through,” said Igor Slyunaev, the Deputy Transport Minister, who is in charge of the project.

“This calls for great courage on the part of the design organisations and the contractors, the people who work on the road in such hard conditions, to fulfill the directive of the President on a project linking the central part of Russia with the Far East.”

Siberia has been a communications problem for centuries. Before the transSiberian railway, which was completed in 1916, most journeys were possible only by boat or horse.

Some projects in the region have fallen foul of the region’s harsh environment in spectacular fashion. One stretch of the 2,000-mile Baikal-Amur mainline railway — from the north of Lake Baikal to the Amur region to the east — collapsed into a summer swamp when the permafrost melted after forest clearances.

Construction of the railway was begun in the 1930s by Stalinist slave labourers and was completed only two years ago. Large parts of Siberia are now populated by the descendents of Stalin’s labour camps.

When completed, the new road link will represent a symbolic victory for Mr Putin’s ambition to bring the country into the modern age. Since Russian settlers expanded into Siberia in the 18th and 19th centuries, generations of Russian leaders have sought to improve communications to consolidate terroritorial gains and, latterly, to exploit the region’s huge natural resources.

Officials said that the road link would also provide much-needed competition for the transSiberian railway, allowing the transportation of cars and other goods by road from Japan to European Russia. Powerful oil companies are also hoping to persuade the Government in Moscow to allow the construction of new pipelines to China.

The road plan envisages more than £79 million in financing by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, with an overall budget in excess of £1.2 billion.

The longest continuous road route in the world is the Pan-American highway system, which runs 16,000 miles from Argentina to Alaska, but it is broken by a boat journey in Central America.

Until now the longest national road in the world was the Trans-Canada Highway, which runs 4,860 miles from St John’s in Newfoundland to Victoria, British Columbia.

An Antarctica route will be the most remote road: the 1,000-mile stretch that will connect the McMurdo base on the Ross Sea coast with the South Pole base is scheduled to be completed in 2004-05.

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