Transport and infrastructure in Laos

Our listing of the primary types 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 particularly good condition.

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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 7.43 million inhabitants, this corresponds to 5.33 meters. This puts Laos in 104th place in the global ranking. However, it is also important to note that the country's population density is very low at around 31 inhabitants per km². In this case, disproportionately long distances generally have to be covered to reach the more remote parts of the country.

With an average of 1142 traffic fatalities per year (2013 - 2019), road traffic in Laos is considered rather mixed. This corresponds to 16.3 accident fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants per year. By comparison, this figure is 12.3 in the USA and 17.0 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	5,331.41 km	167.17 m
Railroads	0 km	0.00 km	0.00 m
Waterways	4,600 km	619.52 km	19.43 m
Commercial harbors	1	0.13	0.000
Airports	8	1.08	0.034

	total	per 1 mio inhabitants	per km²
	Asia
Roadways	16,613,000 km	3,524.24 km	519.50 m
Railroads	280,000 km	59.41 km	8.76 m
Waterways	260,300 km	55.21 km	8.14 m
Commercial harbors	45,998	9.76	0.001
Airports	1,012	0.21	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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