A Study on Some Urban Bus Transport Networks in Middle China

We focus on bus transport networks (BTNs), because buses are the main public transportation tool in China. In this paper, we present the empirical investigation results on the urban bus transport networks (BTNs) of four major cities in middle China. In BTNs, nodes are bus stops. Two nodes are connected by an edge when the stops are serviced by a common bus route. Comparing with the developed cities such as Beijing, the degree distributions of BTNs take exponential function forms. The empirical results on the undeveloped cities show that the degree distributions of BTNs take power function forms. To explain these empirical results and attempt to simulate a possible evolution process of BTNs, we introduce a model by which the analytic result obtained agrees well with the empirical facts. In the end , we explain the reason why BTNs in the developed cities and the undeveloped cities exhibit distinct degree distributions.