The development of urban transportation is affected by population size, city wealth, urban typology, and the built environment and has significant implications for urban sustainability. We analyze data of 297 Chinese cities between 2017-2019 using univariate regressions to examine the relationship between public and private transportation and city size and multivariate regressions to examine the impacts of the above urban factors on transportation. Both public transit use and private vehicle number scale super-linearly with population and sub-linearly with gross regional product (GRP). We find that the type of city (industrial, mixed-economy, or commercial) affects the impacts of population size, city wealth and the built environment on transportation. We find that transport development patterns extracted from intra-city variations are different from those derived from pooling data of multiple cities over time, indicating the importance of choosing appropriate analyses to inform local policymaking. To reduce auto dependence in individual Chinese cities, enhancing land use diversity, building rail transit, and expanding the taxi fleet are more effective than increasing population density. Our findings help to understand the drivers of public and private transportation in urban China and promote sustainable growth of Chinese cities.