One can generally say that the Bessarabian traffic conditions of Bessarabia were bad and remained bad. Travel prior to 1914 was an arduous affairs. People had to walk, go on horseback or travel in a horse drawn wagon or sled. After 1914 there was a railroad connection, but otherwise horse and wagon remained the main transportation. The first bicycles appeared in Krasna as late as 1930. According to Josef Erker the first bicycle in town belonged to teacher Luba Jonike. Cars were not owned in the village and it was very rare to see a car on the street.
The underdeveloped traffic system naturally was an obstruction to the economic development for the colony and all of Bessarabia. This remained a fact even when the region belonged to Rumania. One of the reasons Bessarabia never really connected with Rumania in that sense could be blamed on the traffic situation. An essay by Wilhelm Hornung ¹⁾ gives a good insight of travel on the steppe.

Roads as such in use in central and western Europe never existed in Bessarabia. Most of them were natural trails (dirt roads). Rudolf Weiß ²⁾) writes: Finally in 1905 the district office laid cobble stones on part of the connection Arzis-Akkerman. Rudnickii reports in 1916: ³⁾ Ukrainian roads are the worst on earth. In the summer they are heaps of dust and in the spring and fall and on rainy days they are bottomless pits where even the lightest farm wagon gets mired to the axles. If there are any bridges at all, they are in such poor shape, that people cross mostly next to them. The dry summer (barring the dust) is the best time to travel, and the winter when people use sleighs on the snow.

Of the roughly 8,176 kilometers of roads in Bessarabia (1930) only 716 kilometers were man-made and only 166 kilometers were in passable condition. 370 kilometers were dirt roads and the rest, 7,089, kilometers so-called natural trails. Trucks could only operate in dry weather. The roads often looked like this: several tracks run parallel; total width of the tracks is 40-50 meters. This width was necessary since in lasting rainy weather people had to make new tracks as the old ones were deep ruts.

Neither the Russians nor the Rumanians were much inclined to better the road system. Compared to the other colonies, Krasna was in good shape, since it was located on the main route Tarutino-Sarata-Akkerman. The segment Tarutino-Krasna was one of the very few man made roads in all of Bessarabia at the beginning of the 1930's and there are newspaper reports about the road expansion of 1931.

• Dakota Rundschau dated April 17, 1931: After a snow storm on March 10, there was rain. The roads are impassable and even a four-horse wagon will not get through. The wheels sink to the axles and the horses are belly-deep in the muck. We were promised an asphalt road in the spring, which will cost several million (lei).
• Dakota Rundschau dated June 11, 1931: I already mentioned that we are building a road. An engineer came to the village yesterday and inspected the bridge across the Kogälnik, which was constructed 55 years ago. He found the bridge in good repair overall and just suggested a bit of re-inforcement with cement…we were promised that the road would be finished by fall

. Appearantly not much else was done. The Siebenbürgisch-deutsches Tageblatt (German Daily Paper of Siebenbürgen) dated January 30, 1937 writes: During the rains of the fall entire Besarabian villages are cut off from the rest of the world. This situation demonstrates once again how much was left undone in our province over the years. The biggest fault lies in the neglect of the roads. The poor road system was still a problem during the resettlement action of 1940. The road conditions are mentioned in a report written by the German resettlement commisioner: The only connection deserving the name of a road would be the stretch between Kischinew and Hancesti. 36 kilometers of it are gravel and asphalt. All other routes which are supposed to be used are undeveloped and some of them are just dirt farm roads of the worst kind.

The most important traffic connections around Krasna were:

• Akkerman-Sarata-Arzis-Paris-Krasna-Tarutino;
• Tarutino-Alt Posttal-Wittenberg-Bolgrad-Galatz;
• Tarutino-Beresina-Bender;
• Tarutino-Beresina-Klöstitz-Odessa;
• Wittenberg-Kulm-Leipzig-Kischinev.

Building the railroad in Bessarabia was more a strategic thought process than a practical or economical one. The first rail connection connected Kischinev with the Russian Empire in 1871. The connection Bender-Kainari-Reni was completed 1877/1878. It touched the area of the German colonists in Leipzig at the northeastern corner. This connection was of no use to grain sales of the German colonists, the economically important route for the Germans. The connection from Basarabeasca (Leipzig) to Akkerman was opened only in 1914 and cut diagonally through the settlement.

Correspondents from Krasna filed reports of it in US papers, such as the Staats-Anzeiger on January 25, 1913: The new rail connection Leipzig-Akkerman which will benefit us all is the talk of the day. Construction is scheduled to begin in the spring.

All railroad tracks were patterned after the Russian wide track. When Bessarabia went from Russia to Rumania in 1918, the railroad was switched to the European regular tracks. After Russia occupied Bessarabia in July of 1940, this was immediately reversed. The railroad was not very capable. According to Ion Frunza in his article: “Bessarabien, rumänische Rechte und Leistungen”, (Bessarabia, Rumanian Laws and Benefits), Bessarabia in 1918 had only 28 locomotives. Only 11 passenger trains operated at this time. In 1939 there were 94 passenger trains and 65 cargo trains.

The following rail lines existed in 1940:

• Galatz-Reni-Bolgrad-Romanowka-Emmental-Bender;
• Akkerman-Sarata-Bessarabeaska/Romanowka (Krasna was on this line);
• Jassy-Kischinev-Bender-Tiraspol-Odessa;
• Teplitz-Ismail ⁴⁾

According to the German Peoples’ Calendar (Deutscher Volkskalender) for Bessarabia, the line Akkerman-Sarata-Bessarabeaska/Romanowka (Leipzig) was 149 kilometers long and had the following stops within the German colonies: Beresina (Tarutino), Paris (train stop), Arzis, Gnadental (train stop), and Sarata.

Several sources show that Krasna expressed an interest in a rail connection early on:

• The community of Krasna already agreed to the building of a railroad in 1864 in a community decree.⁵⁾
• The community supplied the land for the track Basarabeasca (Leipzig) to Akkerman free of charge under the condition that a railroad station will be built on Krasna land.⁶⁾
• According to a newspaper report ⁷⁾ the community petitioned the government in 1928 to build a train depot. The government agreed with the stipulation that Krasna supply the construction cost of 1,600.000 lei. The community accepted this condition. Land for the train depot was set aside 1.5 kilometers distant from the village at the space behind the big stone bridge. (It is assumed that the train station mentioned below was located there.)

The train station of Beresina, 12 kilometers distant from the village ⁸⁾ was accessible from Krasna for the transport of people and wares. People could also use the train stop in Paris ⁹⁾, 5 kilometers away. Later, Krasna received a station for passenger transport, called “Ciuleni”. It is not clear how this name was chosen since the village bearing this name is located on the opposite side of the Kogälnik valley, further away from the rail line than Krasna.

This train station was put into service on January 15, 1937, because Father Schumacher reports relating to the construction of the parish home: ¹⁰⁾ We have declared January 15 a day of rest because on this day the first train arrived in Krasna. Several village youths greeted the train with the national flag and 19 villagers took the train to Beresina at a cost of 25 lei. They returned with the afternoon train.

Waterways were a considerable distance from the German settlement area. Kilia was the closest port on the Danube (70-100 kilometers distant) and Akkerman on the Dnjestr Liman. These ports were important to the economic life of the Bessarabian Germans, since they transported excess grain after the harvest there. Large shipments also went to Odessa, which was still 40 kilometers behind Akkerman and only accessible by the ferry. After Bessarabia was severed from Russia, Akkerman and Odessa disappeared as trade ports. They were replaced by Galatz and Konstanza and Bugas (on the mouth of the Dnjestr Liman) at the end of the 1930's.