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The transportation sector is one of the major driving forces of carbon emissions. Identifying the factors that affect CO 2 emissions from the transportation sector is important to build a low-carbon city. Most existing research focuses on the total effect of factors on CO 2 emissions while the indirect influence is also the driving force of CO 2 emissions. Additionally, identifying the causal relationship between variables is helpful to study the mutual acting mechanism. Therefore, this paper uses the path analysis model to estimate the direct, indirect and total influences of driving factors on transportation CO 2 emissions in Beijing and investigate the causality relationships between variables. The results show that reducing energy intensity and transportation intensity are the key factors in controlling the increase of transportation-related CO 2 emissions. Population has the greatest positive impact on CO 2 emissions because an increasing population is leading to growth in energy consumption and the number of motor vehicles. However, population could indirectly affect the energy intensity and transportation intensity to reduce carbon emissions. Moreover, motor vehicles increase CO 2 emissions due to the growth in private car population and its low energy efficiency. And, the change in the economic growth pattern somewhat inhibits the growth rate of CO 2 emissions by reducing the energy intensity and transportation intensity indirectly. To further suppress the growth of transportation carbon emissions, the following steps should be taken: appropriately improve the quality of population, control the scale of motor vehicles, develop and promote clean energy, and reduce traffic energy intensity and transportation intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]