Summary
International Symposium on Nonlinear Theory and Its Applications
2016
Session Number:C1L-E
Session:
Number:C1L-E-4
Bus Transport Network in Hong Kong: Scale-Free or Not?
Tanuja Shanmukhappa, Ivan Wang-Hei Ho, Chi K. Tse,
pp.-
Publication Date:2016/11/27
Online ISSN:2188-5079
Summary:
Bus Transport Network (BTN) is one of the major sub-networks in Public Transport Network (PTN) in any city for daily commute of a large number of passengers. In this paper, we analyze the BTN structure in Hong Kong considering the geographical locations of bus stops and their directed connectivity from a complex network perspective. The presence of various geographical and socio-economic constraints in the city give rise to the bus network structure of 4,065 nodes connected with 7,909 edges. 916 routes are operated by five major franchised bus services in Hong Kong. Through introducing and implementing a novel `Supernode' concept in the BTN, which is a collection of closely associated bus stops with respect to their separations and directions, our work evidently shows that the unweighted, directed network under consideration behaves more closely to a scale-free network after applying such concept. Such finding lays the foundation for future studies on BTN design and bus route management for optimal transport efficiency.