Empirical investigation of topological and weighted properties of a bus transport network from China

Many bus transport networks (BTNs) have evolved into directed networks. A new representation model for BTNs is proposed, called directed-space P. The bus transport network of Harbin (BTN-H) is described as a directed and weighted complex network by the proposed representation model and by giving each node weights. The topological and weighted properties are revealed in detail. In-degree and out-degree distributions, in-weight and out-weight distributions are presented as an exponential law, respectively. There is a strong relation between in-weight and in-degree (also between out-weight and out-degree), which can be fitted by a power function. Degree-degree and weight-weight correlations are investigated to reveal that BTN-H has a disassortative behavior as the nodes have relatively high degree (or weight). The disparity distributions of out-degree and in-degree follow an approximate power-law. Besides, the node degree shows a near linear increase with the number of routes that connect to the corresponding station. These properties revealed in this paper can help public transport planners to analyze the status quo of the BTN in nature.