Taizhou in East China's Zhejiang province is one of the least congested cities in China, a report said on Thursday.

According to the report on China's major cities'transportation in 2018, Taizhou ranked third in terms of overall road conditions, following Nantong in Jiangsu province and Shaoxing in Zhejiang province.

The report was jointly released by Gaode maps, the Institute of sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Alibaba Cloud.

For the first time, the report adopted a transportation health index system, which has nine indicators including the proportion of congested sections of roadways during rush hours to measure a city's general transportation condition.

According to the report, the cities with the index above 69.5 percent have relatively “healthy” traffic conditions.

It is notable that most cities situated in the Yangtze River Delta achieved high grades while those located in the Pearl River Delta were low, indicating their transportation systems are relatively "un-healthy".

Among the 50 monitored cities nationwide, Taizhou's health index stood at 79.3 percent, well above the benchmark.

The city had seen increasingly decreased congestion levels since 2013 when local authorities launched a campaign to ease traffic flow.

Taizhou Coastal Highway, the largest transportation construction project in Taizhou's history, opens to traffic on Jan 16. [Photo/taizhou.com.cn]