The Pan-Philippine Highway, also known as the Maharlika Highway, is a network of roads, expressways, bridges, and ferry services that connect the islands of Luzon, Samar, Leyte, and Mindanao in the Philippines, serving as the country's principal transport backbone. Measuring 3379.73 km long excluding sea routes not counted by highway milestones, it is the longest road in the Philippines that forms the country's north–south backbone component of National Route 1 (N1) of the Philippine highway network. The entire highway is designated as Asian Highway 26 (AH26) of the Asian Highway Network. The northern terminus of the highway is in front of the Ilocos Norte Provincial Capitol in Laoag and the southern terminus is near the Zamboanga City Hall in Zamboanga City.

History

The Pan-Philippine Highway System was an infrastructure program of President Diosdado Macapagal as a first priority project for the improvement and expansion of Philippine highway and land transport networks. It was stated in his final State of the Nation Address in 1965 that the project requires the concreting of 3,003 km from 1965 to 1969, which continued into the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos. This included the construction of 11,333 bridges, comprising the entire system. It is a mixture of old existing roads and new roads that would be eventually added to become part of the highway. Government planners believed that the motorway and other connected roads would stimulate agricultural production by reducing transport costs, encourage social and economic development outside existing major urban centers such as Manila, and expand industrial production for domestic and overseas markets. Construction, which continued in the following decades, was supported by loans and grants from foreign aid institutions, including the World Bank. In 1979, the highway was renamed to Maharlika Highway. The highway was rehabilitated and improved in 1997, during the administration of President Fidel V. Ramos, with assistance from the Japanese government, and dubbed the "Philippine-Japan Friendship Highway". Japan's assistance is applied only up to Carmen, Davao del Norte at the south, thus covering only about 2100 km or about 62% of the highway's entire length. In 1998, the Department of Tourism designated 35 sections of the highway as "Scenic Highways", with developed amenities for travelers and tourists.

Asian Highway Network

The Pan-Philippine Highway is designated as AH26 in the Asian Highway Network, a cooperative project which seeks to improve highway systems and standards across the continent. Ratified by the Philippines in 2007, it is currently the only highway in the system that is isolated from every other highway; island-based sections of the Asian Highway Network in Japan ( AH1 ), Sri Lanka ( AH43 ) and Indonesia ( AH2 ) are all linked to the mainland sections by ferries to South Korea ( AH1 ), India (Dhanushkodi), and Singapore, respectively. Despite its isolation, it can be linked internationally via ferry routes such as Laoag–China and Zamboanga–Malaysia.

Route description

AH26 officially runs along the following thoroughfares:

Auxiliary Routes

Alternatively, AH26 runs along the following thoroughfares:

Intersections

Auxiliary routes

Alternative names

Pan-Philippine Highway also has alternative names, especially locally within the poblacion of respective town and cities.