World Transportation - 2024

Airports

45,527 (2024)

Heliports

20,316 (2024)

Railways

total: 1,148,186 km (2013)

Waterways

2,293,412 km (2017)

top ten longest rivers: Nile (Africa) 6,693 km; Amazon (South America) 6,436 km; Mississippi-Missouri (North America) 6,238 km; Yenisey-Angara (Asia) 5,981 km; Ob-Irtysh (Asia) 5,569 km; Yangtze (Asia) 5,525 km; Yellow (Asia) 4,671 km; Amur (Asia) 4,352 km; Lena (Asia) 4,345 km; Congo (Africa) 4,344 km

note 1: rivers are not necessarily navigable along the entire length; if measured by volume, the Amazon is the largest river in the World, responsible for about 20% of the Earth's freshwater entering the ocean

note 2: there are 20 countries without rivers: 3 in Africa (Comoros, Djibouti, Libya); 1 in the Americas (Bahamas); 8 in Asia (Bahrain, Kuwait, Maldives, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen); 3 in Europe (Malta, Monaco, Holy See), 5 in Oceania (Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Tonga, Tuvalu); these countries also do not have natural lakes

top ten largest natural lakes (by surface area): Caspian Sea (Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan) 372,960 sq km; Lake Superior (Canada, United States) 82,414 sq km; Lake Victoria (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda) 69,490 sq km; Lake Huron (Canada, United States) 59,596 sq km; Lake Michigan (United States) 57,441 sq km; Lake Tanganyika (Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Zambia) 32,890 sq km; Great Bear Lake (Canada) 31,800 sq km; Lake Baikal (Russia) 31,494 sq km; Lake Nyasa (Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania) 30,044 sq km; Great Slave Lake (Canada) 28,400 sq km

note 1: the areas of the lakes are subject to seasonal variation; only the Caspian Sea is saline, the rest are fresh water

note 2: Lakes Huron and Michigan are technically a single lake because the flow of water between the Straits of Mackinac that connects the two lakes keeps their water levels at near-equilibrium; combined, Lake Huron-Michigan is the largest freshwater lake by surface area in the World

note 3: the deepest lake in the world (1,620 m), and also the largest freshwater lake by volume (23,600 cu km), is Lake Baikal in Russia

Merchant marine

total: 103,577 (2023)

by type: bulk carrier 13,141, container ship 5,815, general cargo 19,918, oil tanker 11,604, other 53,099

Ports and terminals

top twenty container ports as measured by Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) throughput: Shanghai (China) - 47,030,300; Singapore (Singapore) - 37,470,000; Ningbo (China) - 31,070,000; Shenzhen (China) - 28,767,600; Guangzhou (China) - 24,180,000; Qingdao (China) - 23,710,000; Busan (South Korea) - 22,706,130; Tianjin (China) - 20,269,400; Hong Kong (China) - 17,798,000; Rotterdam (Netherlands) - 15,300,000; Dubai (UAE) - 13,742,000; Port Kelang (Malaysia) - 13,724,460; Xiamen (China) - 12,045,700; Antwerp (Belgium) - 12,020,000; Tanjung Pelepas (Malaysia) - 11,200,000; Los Angeles (US) - 10,677,610; Kaohsiung (Taiwan) - 9,864,448; Long Beach (US) - 9,384,368; New York/New Jersey (US) - 8,985,929; Hamburg (Germany) - 8,715,000 (2021)

View of the port of Los Angeles, California: View of the port of Long Beach, California: