Transport and infrastructure in Papua New Guinea

Our listing of the primary types of transport compares the infrastructure of Papua New Guinea with the average of all countries in Oceania. The traffic routes have noticeable defects in many places and are often not in particularly good condition.

The waterways listed refer to inland traffic on rivers and canals. The number of ports includes those located on the 5,152 km of coastline. In 2019, about 338,300 freight containers were transported.

› Airports in Papua New Guinea

Back to overview: Papua New Guinea

Road traffic

The network of roads and highways has a total length of 9,349 km. For each of the country's 9.95 million inhabitants, this corresponds to 0.94 meters. This puts Papua New Guinea in 208th place in the global ranking. However, it is also important to note that the country's population density is very low at around 21 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 1268 traffic fatalities per year (2013 - 2019), road traffic in Papua New Guinea is considered reasonably safe. This corresponds to 14.1 accident fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants per year. By comparison, this figure is 12.3 in the USA and 17.0 worldwide.

In Papua New Guinea, left-hand traffic is the rule on the roads, i.e. you drive in the left lane and overtake on the right. Oncoming traffic comes to meet you on the right side. Here you can also find an overview of all countries with left-hand traffic.

	total	per 1 mio inhabitants	per km²
	Papua New Guinea
Roadways	9,300 km	939.65 km	20.20 m
Railroads	0 km	0.00 km	0.00 m
Waterways	11,000 km	1,105.59 km	23.77 m
Commercial harbors	177	17.79	0.000
Airports	50	5.03	0.108

	total	per 1 mio inhabitants	per km²
	Oceania
Roadways	30,900 km	2,302.70 km	55.93 m
Railroads	600 km	44.49 km	1.08 m
Waterways	11,200 km	835.21 km	20.29 m
Commercial harbors	5,395	402.03	0.010
Airports	216	16.10	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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