Transport and infrastructure in Laos

Our listing of the primary kinds of transport compares the infrastructure of Laos with the average of all countries in Asia. The traffic routes have noticeable defects in many places and are often not in a particularly good condition.

The waterways and ports listed refer to inland traffic on rivers and canals, as there is no direct access to the sea in Laos.

› Airports in Laos

Back to overview: Laos

Road traffic

The network of roads and highways has a total length of 39,586 km. For each of the country's 7.28 million inhabitants, this corresponds to 5.44 meters. This puts Laos in 103rd place in the global ranking. However, it is also important to note the country's population density, which is very low at around 31 inhabitants per km². Like this, disproportionately long distances generally have to be covered to reach the more remote parts of the country.

With an average of 1101 traffic fatalities per year (2012 - 2019), road traffic in Laos is considered rather mixed. This corresponds to around 4.3 accident fatalities per 16.1 inhabitants per year. By comparison, this figure is 5.9 in the European Union as a whole and 17.1 worldwide.

In Laos, traffic drives on the right-hand side of the road, i.e. people drive in the right-hand lane and overtake on the left. Oncoming traffic comes toward you on the left side. Here you can also find an overview of all countries with left-hand traffic.

	total	per 1 mio inhabitants	per km²
	Laos
Roadways	39,600 km	5,440.96 km	167.17 m
Railroads	0 km	0.00 km	0.00 m
Waterways	4,600 km	632.25 km	19.43 m
Commercial harbors	1	0.14	0.000
Airports	41	5.64	0.173

	total	per 1 mio inhabitants	per km²
	Asia
Roadways	14,699,500 km	3,186.29 km	459.66 m
Railroads	280,000 km	60.70 km	8.76 m
Waterways	260,300 km	56.42 km	8.14 m
Commercial harbors	46,054	9.98	0.001
Airports	4,349	0.94	0.000

Data sources used

• Global Health Observatory Data Repository (World Health Organization)
• UNCTAD
• Internation Union of Railways (UIC)
• CIA Factbook
• OECD Statistics
• Wikipedia (german)

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