Complex network analysis of public transportation networks: a comprehensive study

In this study, using the network approach, we analyzed the urban public transportation systems of 5 Hungarian cities. We performed a comprehensive network analysis of the systems with the main goal of identifying significant similarities and differences of the transportation networks of these cities. Although previous studies often investigated unweighted networks, one novelty of our study is to consider directed and weighted links, where the weights represent the capacities of the vehicles (bus, tram, trolleybus) in the morning peak hours. In particular, we calculated descriptors of global network characteristic and various centrality measures of the network nodes in both the weighted case and unweighted case. By comparing the results obtained for the different cities, we get a highly detailed picture of the differences in the organization of the public transport, which may due to historical and geographical factors. Also, by comparing the results obtained from the weighted and unweighted approaches, we can identify which are the most sensitive routes and stations of the network pointing out some organizational inconsistencies of the transportation system.