Abstract:Identifying the driving factors of transportation carbon emissions is particularly critical to achieve the goals of carbon emission peaking and carbon neutrality. This paper used the transportation sector carbon emissions data from 2002 to 2017 and decomposed the changes of transportation carbon emissions in time trend into six driving factors: energy structure, (transportation) energy intensity, traffic intensity, economic urbanization, population urbanization, and land urbanization. At the same time, utilizing decoupling theory and Generalized Index(GFI) are to analyze trends of China's transportation carbon emissions in temporal and spatial perspective, decoupling status and the driving factors behind them. The Generalized Fisher Index (GFI) factor decomposition method used has the advantage of eliminating the calculated residual value and making the decomposition more complete. The study found that: (1) China's transportation carbon emissions continue to grow, but the number of provinces with ideal decoupling relationships have increased from the initial 0 to 8; (2) Economy and land urbanization are the most critical factors hindering carbon emission reduction, while population urbanization, traffic intensity, and transportation energy structure promote carbon emission reduction. (3) Energy intensity and traffic intensity are the main reasons for formatting four different types of decoupling in various provinces. Transportation energy intensity and traffic intensity firstly promote the growth and then reduction of transportation carbon emissions in the strong decoupling and weak decoupling provinces. Building an "efficient, compact, and smart" urban transportation system will help the transportation sector achieve the "carbon emission peaking" earlier.