Stem and Leaf Plot for Strongly Skewed Data

I would not guess that a stemplot is the best way to visualize these data, and so I would not recommend one way of setting up the stems as better than another. Particularly so, because the data are strongly skewed to the right, spanning a couple of orders of magnitude.

Nevertheless, stem plots can be made: Here is the default stemplot of these 32 observations from R, followed by the one from Minitab, in which the line beginning (8) has eight observations, one of which is the median 1318.

   R
   The decimal point is 3 digit(s) to the right of the |

    0 | 00012334456888933455789
    2 | 01607
    4 | 
    6 | 7
    8 | 
   10 | 5
   12 | 9
   14 | 7



 Minitab:
 Stem-and-leaf of Motorway  N  = 32
 Leaf Unit = 100

  15  0   000112334567788
 (8)  1   23445778
  9   2   0169
  5   3   6
  4   4
  4   5
  4   6   7
  3   7
  3   8
  3   9
  3   10
  3   11  4
  2   12  9
  1   13
  1   14  7

With the parameter scale=.5 the R function stem returns the abbreviated stemplot below.

   The decimal point is 4 digit(s) to the right of the |

   0 | 0000000001111111111222222334
   0 | 7
   1 | 13
   1 | 5

I do not see how to make a stemplot on any scale without losing some of the detail of the data. If information is to be lost in making a graphical presentation of the data, perhaps a histogram is a better choice. Below is a Minitab histogram of these data.

For some purposes, it might be better to make a histogram of $\log_{10}$ of motorway lengths for the 30 EU states that have motorways.