Reveal of Critical Points of the Urban Track-based Public Transport Networks with Network Science Methods

Absztrakt

The aim of this research was to explore the topological characteristics of the public transport network of the examined big cities and to show the vulnerabilities, on the basis of this, to take strategic decisions, which increase the robustness of the network. In this frame five big cities, Washington, London, Paris, Vienna and Budapest track-based community networks were compared, with network analysis method. The research drew attention to an interesting thing. It can be thought that the most important points in the urban public transport are always the central big stations, where a great number of lines meet. The research points out that these are not necessarily the most crowded nodes from robustness point of view, and the involvement of the urban railways into the urban public network would increase the robustness of the network. If those urban railway lines played an active role in the urban transport system, the load of the central lines would drop significantly and along with that the robustness of the whole system would rise not only against targeted terror attacks but against accidental technical disturbances as well.