If you live in Brovary, Bila Tserkva, or Obukhiv and want to take a direct bus to Zhytomyr or Chernihiv while bypassing Kyiv, chances are such a route simply doesn't exist. Research by the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting (IER) has shown that Kyiv region has the worst bus service indicators among all regions of Ukraine. Not due to a lack of passengers, but because of the network structure itself.
One route — 1.9 million passengers per year
Kyiv region has only 1.7 "route equivalents" per 100,000 population — the lowest indicator in Ukraine alongside Zakarpattia. But the load on each of these few routes is enormous: approximately 1.9 million passengers per year. For comparison, in neighboring Zhytomyr region, a route serves an average of 229,000 people — eight times less.
The result is a situation similar to a single worn path through a forest that everyone must use, instead of a network of roads.
Why this happened
The reason is not in the decline of transport, but in the very logic according to which the network was built. Routes in Kyiv region have historically been laid out radially — they all lead to Kyiv and back. There are almost no direct inter-regional connections from populated areas of the region that bypass the capital.
When Kyiv is excluded from the analysis, Kyiv region turns out to be the weakest connected to the rest of the country among all regions.
In the overall connectivity rating, the region ranked last with a score of 1.8 — compared to a median of 42.4 across the country and a maximum of 100.
The capital saves the statistics
Here lies an unexpected nuance: if Kyiv and the region are counted as a single agglomeration, the picture changes dramatically — the region would rank sixth out of 24 in terms of connectivity. This means the problem is not that there are no passengers to transport, but that all infrastructure is tied exclusively to the capital, and without it the region "crumbles" on the transport map.
Who is in a better position
IER divided regions into four types:
- Sufficient network: Dnipropetrovsk, Volyn, Mykolaiv, Zhytomyr, Rivne, and Cherkasy regions.
- Dense but overloaded: Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, and Khmelnytsky — many routes, but load is above average.
- Deficit: Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Zakarpattia, Chernivtsi, Vinnytsia, and Odesa — few routes for high demand.
- Weak demand: Sumy, Kirovohrad, and Chernihiv — sparse network, but few passengers either.
Poltava and Zaporizhzhia regions found themselves on the border between categories, while Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kherson were excluded from the comparison due to data distortion caused by occupation.
What this means in practice
For a resident of a district center in Kyiv region, this means one thing: to reach a neighboring regional center, most often you will have to travel through Kyiv — with a transfer, loss of time, and extra money for a ticket. The question of whether the region will have at least a few direct inter-district routes bypassing the capital, or whether the network will continue to be built on the principle of "all roads lead to Kyiv," remains open — and the answer to it depends on whether the region's position will change in the next rating.
