Bus Hub · Nanjing South Coach Terminal
Nanjing killed the lonely out-of-town bus station: long-distance coaches, airport buses, metro and high-speed rail share one 600-metre transfer hall at Nanjing South.
The first floor of the Nanjing South complex is a full transport hall: intercity coaches, city buses and airport buses sit one level below the platforms and one above the metro. China Railway’s own description counts 130 elevators within roughly 600 m and calls the result a “seamless transfer” — for once, the brochure undersells it.
Older coach stations around Zhongyangmen and Zhonghuamen still matter for regional routes, but the logic has flipped: the coach network is now a feeder into the rail hub, not a rival to it.
For towns across the Anhui border and the smaller Jiangsu counties, coaches remain the direct option — departures track the same origin map as the city’s visitors: Anhui, Shandong, Henan, and the delta’s own Zhejiang and Shanghai corridors.
The new competition is the metro itself: Line S2’s 54.2 km to Ma’anshan, opened April 2026, turns a classic coach route into a subway ride with 16 stations. Expect coach timetables on that corridor to thin out first.
Use coaches for the counties the metro hasn’t reached yet — and always compare against the S-lines before you buy. At Nanjing South the coach hall is part of the same building, so a mixed rail-coach itinerary costs you minutes, not a taxi across town.
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