Among 50 major cities across China, which city likes using public transportation most? According to a new report, people in Nanjing like to take the greener option of using public transport most, followed by Lanzhou, Xi’an, Shanghai and Beijing.

As the report shows, the Green Transport Intensity Index of Nanjing is 2.64, while Shanghai scores 2.59. It is also found that Nanjing citizens like to travel by bike, partly thanks to its sound bike lane system.

The authors of the report analyzed the index of Shanghai, whose public transport infrastructure is relatively comprehensive compared with other cities. As a megacity, Shanghai has yet to grapple with the problem of reducing the distances travelled between connecting forms of public transport and the “first” and “last-kilometer”, when commuters must get to or from their home and the closest public transport hub, such as a subway station or bus stop.

What is interesting is that, according to the report, the rate of public transport coverage within 500 meters of any given spot in Nanjing is 88.5%, lower than that of Shanghai at 91.3%). However, as the authors of the report lay out, even though some bus stops are close to each other in Shanghai, getting between them is not as straight forward as it seems on paper. For instance, though the linear distance between bus stops is not long, citizens have to travel through tunnels or over skywalks to get to the nearest stop.

The report was compiled by Amap (a Chinese mapping service provider), the Department of Big Data Development of the State Information Center, the Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of Social Science, the Tsinghua-Daimler Joint Research Center for Sustainable Transportation, and the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) Research Center of Tongji University.