China’s public transport serves 90% of urban residents, leaving US cities in the dust

China is ‘ahead of schedule’ in achieving UN 2030 sustainability goals, while global progress remains limited, new report says

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The share of Chinese urban residents with easy transport access has grown significantly over the past decade. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 8:00pm, 5 Oct 2024

China’s sprawling public transport networks now serve 90 per cent of the country’s urban population, far more than those in major cities in the United States, Australia and Africa.

Major coastal and central Chinese cities offer “convenient” public transport access to nearly two times more of their populations than other global hubs, including New York, according to a new report.

The findings were published on September 25 in a report by the International Research Centre of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals (CBAS). It examines progress by China and the rest of the world towards the sustainable development goals adopted by UN members in 2015.

One of these goals calls for creating sustainable cities and communities, with a target of providing affordable, safe and accessible transport systems. Only one in two urban residents globally has convenient access to public transport, according to UN statistics.

The team behind the report used remote sensing, population data, socioeconomic data and geospatial analysis to examine 337 Chinese cities, along with global cities with populations over 1 million, to determine the share of urban residents with easy access to public transport as of 2022.

“The proportion of urban population with convenient access to public transportation is relatively high in Asia and Europe, with China reaching 90 per cent,” the report states.