The S1 railway line opens to traffic in Taizhou, East China's Zhejiang province on Dec 28. [WeChat account: tzfb001]

Taizhou in East China's Zhejiang province ranked fifth in China in terms of traffic conditions, according to a recently released report on transportation in China's major cities in 2022.

The report was released by Gaode Maps and organizations including the Big Data Development Department of the State Information Center of China, the Tsinghua University-Daimler Joint Research Center for Sustainable Transport, as well as the ITS Research Center of Tongji University.

The report adopted a traffic health index system that used indicators like the proportion of congested sections of roadways and the average travel speed during rush hours to measure a city's general transportation conditions.

Taizhou's traffic health index had a rating of 68.29 percent in 2022, ranking fifth nationwide, behind only Nantong, Luoyang, Hohhot, and Shaoxing.

This is the 14th time that Taizhou has been ranked among the top 10 cities in China in this respect since 2009. The local government's sustained efforts in easing traffic congestion have played a big part in this.

The city has seen success in measures like enhancing road management and traffic incident detection, as well as optimizing the construction of traffic infrastructure, including railways, roads, and parking lots.

In 2022, the city built 25.12 kilometers of roads, 52.4 kilometers of railways, and more than 25,300 parking lots in its urban areas.

In addition, it launched 97 buses and 1,100 publicly shared bicycles to increase its public transportation capacity and to encourage the public to travel in an eco-friendly manner.

Taizhou's S1 railway, which was put into service last December, currently transports an average of more than 18,000 passengers per day.