Nanjing is the transportation hub in eastern China and the downstream Yangtze River area. Different means of transportation constitute a three-dimensional transport system that includes land, water and air. As in most other Chinese cities, public transportation the dominant mode of travel of the majority of the citizens.

Public transportation:

The city also boasts an efficient network of public transportation, which mainly consists of bus, taxi and metro systems. The bus network, which is currently run by four companies,provides more than 170 routes covering all parts of the city and suburban areas. The citys first mass transit line, Metro Line No.1, started service on May 15, 2005, and Metro Line No. 2 began construction in November 2005. The city is planning to complete a 433-kilometer (269 mi)-long Metro and light-railsystem by 2050. The expansion of the Metro network will greatly facilitate the intracity transportation and reduce the currently heavy traffic congestion.

Buses

Buses without air conditioning cost 1 yuan per trip and buses with air conditioning cost 2 yuan.  The extra yuan is surely worth it in the steamy summers.  You can pay with an IC card or with 1 yuan coins.  No change is given.

The bus stops can appear quite hectic. There are often a hundred people at one station, but buses arrive so frequently that there may be 3 or 4 buses stopped at one station at the same time. 

If you don¡¯t read Chinese it would be quite diificult to navigate the bus routes without planning ahead.  The signs which display bus routes are only written in Chinese characters.

The roads in the Xinjiekou and Gulou often suffer from intense traffic jams in the middle of the day.

Subway

The No. 1 North-South subway line was put into operation in 2005.  It has a length of 22 kilometers and has 16 stops.

The Nanjing Railway Station Station (yes I said station twice) connects so smoothly with The Nanjing Railway Station  that you will not even realize they are two separate stations.  This is very convenient for transporting large luggage in and out of the Nanjing Train Station.

Tickets cost between 2 and 4 yuan.  It is a bit cheaper to use an IC card .  The ticket machines can take bills or coins and do give change. 

The ticket machines also have English and are quite easy to use.  They dispense blue tokens.  These tokens are to be swiped on the way in and deposited on the way out.  That is, when you approach the train you just swipe the token over the pad, and as you head upstairs to exit the station you deposit the token in the machine. Since the Subway was opened they have had plenty of staff on hand to assist passengers with purchasing and using tokens.

Trains arrive every 4 to 8 minutes and run between 6:30am and 10:00pm. 

Air: 

Nanjings airport, Lukou International Airport , serves both national and international flights. In 2007, the airport handled 8.037 million passengers. It was ranked 14th among 126 civil airports in China in terms of yearly passenger transport, and 10th for yearly cargo transport. The airport currently has 85 routes to national and international destinations, which include Japan, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Germany.  The airport is connected by a 29-kilometer (18 mi) highway directly to the city center, and is also linked to various intercity highways, making it accessible to the passengers from the surrounding cities.Water: Port of Nanjing is the largest inland port in China, yearly throughput reaching 108.59 million tons in 2007.

Port:

The port area is 98 kilometers (61 mi) in length and has 64 berths including 16 berths for ships with a tonnage of more than 10,000. Nanjing is also the biggest container port along the Yangtze River; in March 2004, the one million container-capacity base, Longtan Containers Port Area opened, further consolidating Nanjing as the leading port in the region. In the 1960s the first Yangzte river bridge was completed, becoming almost the only solid connection between North and South in eastern China at that time. The bridge became a source of pride and an important symbol of modern China, having been built and designed by the Chinese themselves following failed surveys by other nations and the reliance on and then rejection of Soviet expertise. Begun in 1960 and opened to traffic in 1968, the bridge is a two-tiered road and rail design spanning 4,600 metres on the upper deck, with approximately 1,580 metres spanning the river itself.