"It always gives me an internal pain," he said. "Why is it not happening in Russia? Why can't we do the same?"
Roland Nash, head of research at Renaissance Capital in Moscow, agreed that infrastructure was in poor condition, but said the government was leery that heavy spending would trigger inflation.
"We're in a difficult situation," he said. "The roads, rail, airports and ports are all in need of massive infrastructure spending. The government was trying to pull itself out of the economy rather than invest into the economy."
But that's not the only trouble. It's common to drive along a newly paved road that is already buckling perilously, or torn by potholes. Less than 40% of federal roads, and about a quarter of regional roads, meet Russian regulatory requirements, a report by Renaissance Capital indicates. Many are unevenly laid or unable to bear the traffic they take.
The bad roads, experts say, are often courtesy of rampant corruption: Builders end up blowing their budgets on kickbacks for every imaginable body, from health inspectors to police to the contact who awarded the contract. And so they scrimp on materials or blatantly violate standards, confident that the cash doled out will keep everybody quiet and complicit.
None of this is news to the truckers who've pulled off the road for $3 skewers of meat at a low-slung brick restaurant with plenty of space for parking.
Sure, they say, the poor roads are costing them money. Their cargo arrives late no matter how hard they push; often, it is broken upon arrival. The 430 miles between the country's two great cities take them 12 hours; on a proper highway, they say, it would take eight.
Like many of the drivers, Gorbunov was curious about a foreigner's perception of Russian highways. He's only pulled loads in Russia, and he's heard that things are better elsewhere.
"The guys who drive abroad," he said, "they come back and say it was like having a vacation."
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megan.stack@latimes.com
