How many miles of railway are there in the world?
How many miles of railway are there in the world?
about 1.3 million km — roughly 800,000 miles
Route length and track length differ by roughly a third: a double-track line is one route and two tracks, and the figures are constantly conflated.
World railway route length is roughly 1.3 million km, about one fiftieth of the road network. The United States has the largest network at around 250,000 km, almost all of it freight; China is second and holds by far the largest high-speed network, over 45,000 km, which is more than the rest of the world combined. Global route length peaked in the 1930s and is only now approaching that level again, because 20th-century closures in Europe and North America offset Asian construction for decades.
How the figure is arrived at
National railway administrations report route-kilometres. The recurring trap is that some countries report track-kilometres instead, which counts each track of a multi-track line separately and inflates the figure by 30 to 50% in dense networks.
How confident it is
- Low estimate
- 1,200,000
- High estimate
- 1,400,000
- Spread
- 1.2× between the bounds
Other things people built counts
- How many countries are there in the world? 195 — or 193, or 206, or 249, depending on who is counting
- How many cars are there in the world? about 1.5 billion motor vehicles
- How many planes are in the air right now? roughly 10,000 to 20,000 at any moment
- How many languages are there in the world? about 7,150 living languages
- How many McDonald's are there? about 43,000 in over 100 countries
- How many phones are there in the world? about 8.9 billion mobile connections — more than there are people
- How many nuclear weapons are there? about 12,200 warheads
- How many websites are there? about 1.1 billion hostnames — but only around 200 million active
- How many books have ever been published? about 130 million as of 2010 — probably over 200 million now
- How many airports are there in the world? about 45,000 with runways — but only around 4,000 with scheduled airline service
- How many ATMs are there in the world? about 3 million
- How many cities are there in the world? about 10,000 with over 50,000 people; 33 megacities over 10 million
- How many buildings are there in the world? somewhere between 1.5 and 4 billion
- How many computers are there in the world? roughly 2 billion personal computers in use
Common questions
- How many miles of railway are there in the world?
- about 1.3 million km — roughly 800,000 miles
- How is that estimated?
- National railway administrations report route-kilometres. The recurring trap is that some countries report track-kilometres instead, which counts each track of a multi-track line separately and inflates the figure by 30 to 50% in dense networks.
Related pages
- How many countries are there in the world? 195 — or 193, or 206, or 249, depending on who is counting
- How many cars are there in the world? about 1.5 billion motor vehicles
- How many planes are in the air right now? roughly 10,000 to 20,000 at any moment
- How many languages are there in the world? about 7,150 living languages
- How many McDonald's are there? about 43,000 in over 100 countries
- How many phones are there in the world? about 8.9 billion mobile connections — more than there are people
- How many nuclear weapons are there? about 12,200 warheads
- How many websites are there? about 1.1 billion hostnames — but only around 200 million active
- How many people are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
- How many stars are there in the universe? Space and the universe
- How many bones are in the human body? The human body
- How many grains of sand are there on Earth? Living things and the natural world
- How many ants are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
- How many trees are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
Sources
- The World Factbook — Central Intelligence Agency (Public domain (US Government))