IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0040575.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Network Centrality of Metro Systems

Author

Listed:
  • Sybil Derrible

Abstract

Whilst being hailed as the remedy to the world’s ills, cities will need to adapt in the 21st century. In particular, the role of public transport is likely to increase significantly, and new methods and technics to better plan transit systems are in dire need. This paper examines one fundamental aspect of transit: network centrality. By applying the notion of betweenness centrality to 28 worldwide metro systems, the main goal of this paper is to study the emergence of global trends in the evolution of centrality with network size and examine several individual systems in more detail. Betweenness was notably found to consistently become more evenly distributed with size (i.e. no “winner takes all”) unlike other complex network properties. Two distinct regimes were also observed that are representative of their structure. Moreover, the share of betweenness was found to decrease in a power law with size (with exponent 1 for the average node), but the share of most central nodes decreases much slower than least central nodes (0.87 vs. 2.48). Finally the betweenness of individual stations in several systems were examined, which can be useful to locate stations where passengers can be redistributed to relieve pressure from overcrowded stations. Overall, this study offers significant insights that can help planners in their task to design the systems of tomorrow, and similar undertakings can easily be imagined to other urban infrastructure systems (e.g., electricity grid, water/wastewater system, etc.) to develop more sustainable cities.

Suggested Citation

  • Sybil Derrible, 2012. "Network Centrality of Metro Systems," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(7), pages 1-10, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0040575
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0040575
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0040575
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0040575&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0040575?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Luís M A Bettencourt & José Lobo & Deborah Strumsky & Geoffrey B West, 2010. "Urban Scaling and Its Deviations: Revealing the Structure of Wealth, Innovation and Crime across Cities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(11), pages 1-9, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alves, L.G.A. & Ribeiro, H.V. & Lenzi, E.K. & Mendes, R.S., 2014. "Empirical analysis on the connection between power-law distributions and allometries for urban indicators," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 409(C), pages 175-182.
    2. Anthony Goerzen & Christian Geisler Asmussen & Bo Bernhard Nielsen, 2024. "Global cities, the liability of foreignness, and theory on place and space in international business," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 55(1), pages 10-27, February.
    3. Huang, Siyu & Shi, Yi & Chen, Qinghua & Li, Xiaomeng, 2022. "The growth path of high-tech industries: Statistical laws and evolution demands," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 603(C).
    4. Shana M. Sundstrom & Craig R. Allen & David G. Angeler, 2020. "Scaling and discontinuities in the global economy," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 30(2), pages 319-345, April.
    5. Lei, Weiqian & Jiao, Limin & Xu, Zhibang & Zhu, Xinhua, 2024. "Evolution of urban land and population system coupling micro–dynamics and macro-stability: Trends and paths," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    6. Daan Francois Toerien, 2022. "Linking Entrepreneurial Activities and Community Prosperity/Poverty in United States Counties: Use of the Enterprise Dependency Index," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-16, February.
    7. Ruiqi Li & Lingyun Lu & Weiwei Gu & Shaodong Ma & Gang Xu & H. Eugene Stanley, 2020. "Assessing the attraction of cities on venture capital from a scaling law perspective," Papers 2011.06287, arXiv.org.
    8. J. Sylvan Katz & Guillermo Armando Ronda-Pupo, 2019. "Cooperation, scale-invariance and complex innovation systems: a generalization," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(2), pages 1045-1065, November.
    9. Peter Mayerhofer & Oliver Fritz & Dieter Pennerstorfer, 2010. "Dritter Bericht zur internationalen Wettbewerbsfähigkeit Wiens," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 42430, July.
    10. Brinkley, Catherine & Raj, Subhashni, 2022. "Perfusion and urban thickness: The shape of cities," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    11. Maria Fonoberova & Vladimir A. Fonoberov & Igor Mezic & Jadranka Mezic & P. Jeffrey Brantingham, 2012. "Nonlinear Dynamics of Crime and Violence in Urban Settings," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 15(1), pages 1-2.
    12. Anthony FJ van Raan, 2024. "Simulating urban scaling with a term linkages network of a university," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 51(9), pages 2092-2107, November.
    13. Alexander Jones Gross & Dhiraj Murthy & Lav R. Varshney, 2017. "Pace of Life in Cities and the Emergence of Town Tweeters," SAGE Open, , vol. 7(4), pages 21582440177, December.
    14. Moreno Bonaventura & Luca Maria Aiello & Daniele Quercia & Vito Latora, 2021. "Predicting urban innovation from the US Workforce Mobility Network," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-9, December.
    15. Yves Bettignies & Joao Meirelles & Gabriela Fernandez & Franziska Meinherz & Paul Hoekman & Philippe Bouillard & Aristide Athanassiadis, 2019. "The Scale-Dependent Behaviour of Cities: A Cross-Cities Multiscale Driver Analysis of Urban Energy Use," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(12), pages 1-20, June.
    16. Qingsong He & Lingping Huang & Jing Li, 2022. "Rediscovering the Scaling Law of Urban Land from a Multi-Scale Perspective—A Case Study of Wuhan," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-15, June.
    17. Abbasi, M. & Bollini, A.L. & Castillo, J.L.B. & Deppman, A. & Guidio, J.P. & Matuoka, P.T. & Meirelles, A.D. & Policarpo, J.M.P. & Ramos, A.A.G.F. & Simionatto, S. & Varona, A.R.P. & Andrade-II, E. & , 2020. "Fractal signatures of the COVID-19 spread," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    18. Andres Gomez-Lievano & Oscar Patterson-Lomba, 2018. "Estimating the drivers of urban economic complexity and their connection to economic performance," Papers 1812.02842, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2021.
    19. Rafael Prieto Curiel & Luca Pappalardo & Lorenzo Gabrielli & Steven Richard Bishop, 2018. "Gravity and scaling laws of city to city migration," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(7), pages 1-19, July.
    20. Li, Zekun & Chen, Zhenhua, 2023. "Predicting the future development scale of high-speed rail through the urban scaling law," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0040575. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.