Transport and infrastructure in the Philippines

Our listing of the primary types of transport compares the infrastructure of the Philippines 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.

In terms of the length of its rail network, Philippines ranks 137th in the world with zero meters per inhabitant. In total, the rail network is 77 kilometers long. Passenger traffic reached 384.00 million passenger-kilometers in 2016.

The waterways listed refer to inland traffic on rivers and canals. The number of ports includes those located on the 36,289 km of coastline. In 2020, about 7.51 million freight containers were transported.

› Airports in the Philippines

Back to overview: Philippines

Road traffic

The network of roads and highways has a total length of 216,387 km. For each of the country's 113.88 million inhabitants, this corresponds to 1.90 meters. This puts Philippines in 178th place in the global ranking. However, the country's population density must also be taken into account, which is relatively high at around 380 inhabitants per km². The higher the population density of a country, the shorter the average distance traveled.

With an average of 12468 traffic fatalities per year (2013 - 2019), road traffic in the Philippines is considered reasonably safe. This corresponds to 11.7 accident fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants per year. By comparison, this figure is 12.3 in the USA and 17.0 worldwide.

In the Philippines, 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. This regulation was enforced on March 11th, 1945. Here you can also find an overview of all countries with left-hand traffic.

	total	per 1 mio inhabitants	per km²
	Philippines
Roadways	216,400 km	1,900.13 km	721.29 m
Railroads	100 km	0.68 km	0.26 m
Waterways	3,219 km	28.27 km	10.73 m
Commercial harbors	1,805	15.85	0.006
Airports	46	0.40	0.153

	total	per 1 mio inhabitants	per km²
	Asia
Roadways	16,613,000 km	3,547.96 km	519.50 m
Railroads	280,000 km	59.81 km	8.76 m
Waterways	260,300 km	55.59 km	8.14 m
Commercial harbors	45,998	9.82	0.001
Airports	1,012	0.22	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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