Statistical Analysis of Some Urban Subway Networks

In this paper, we present an investigation on the urban subway networks using various concepts of statistical physics of complex networks, and propose a model to understand the results obtained. We investigate some urban subway networks in China, which are the urban subway networks of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The empirical results show that all the urban subway networks have high clustering coefficient and small character path length, which exhibit small-world behavior, otherwise, these networks are organized by some motifs, which are all the globally coupled networks. In order to explain the results, we propose a model which is in good agreement with the empirical results.