Sustainable Development of Urban Rail Transit Networks: A Vulnerability Perspective

Abstract

Urban rail transit (URT) systems are critical to modern public transportation services. Unfortunately, disruptions in URT systems can lead to dysfunction and threaten sustainable development. This study analyses URT network sustainability from a vulnerability perspective. Two network attack scenarios, including random attacks and intentional attacks, are designed to assess different kinds of disruptions to URT networks. Under random attacks, nodes are randomly removed from the network. In contrast, under intentional attacks, key nodes are identified and removed based on topological metrics and passenger flow volume. Then, URT network vulnerability is evaluated by quantifying the changes in network efficiency and structural integrity under the network attacks from a spatio-temporal point of view. The real-world case of the Shanghai URT system from 1993 to 2020 is used to illustrate the vulnerability in the evolution of the URT system. The results indicate that the URT network is increasingly fault-tolerant and structurally robust over time. The URT network is more vulnerable to intentional attacks than to random failures. Additionally, there are significant spatial differences in the vulnerability of Shanghai URT network. Stations in the central activity zone (CAZ) are more fault-tolerant and robust than stations located outside of the CAZ. Furthermore, stations with large centrality and greater passenger flow volumes and lines with many key nodes and greater passenger flow volumes, are vulnerable to disruptions in the URT networks. This study provides a new index to comprehensively quantify node centrality; it also fills a research gap by analysing the vulnerability of URT networks based on both longitudinal and spatial patterns. Finally, this paper highlights significant practical implications for the sustainable development of URT networks, as well as the sustainable development of public transportation services.

Exploring the Topological Characteristics of Complex Public Transportation Networks: Focus on Variations in Both Single and Integrated Systems in the Seoul Metropolitan Area

“…Studies on public transportation systems in cities have been an active area of interest for practitioners. Mostly, they are geared towards realizing a sustainable transport system which has been defined as one that "satisfies the current transport and mobility needs without compromising the ability of future generations" [14,20]. Researchers are continually focusing on ways of reducing the use of private cars by making public transportation a cheaper and a more competitive alternative.…”

“…Transportation systems are similar to complex networks. Hence, the idea was easily adapted to determine the implications of network structure and its properties on urban transportation [14,[27][28][29].…”

“…Chen et al [25] pointed out that each centrality measure addressed a specific need. The degree of centrality accounts for the direct connections to a node, closeness centrality measures the average distance from one node to all other, the betweenness centrality considers how often a node occurs on the shortest paths between nodes in the network, and the eigenvector centrality measures the importance of a node based on its links with other central nodes [14]. Scheurer et al [34] demonstrated that in places with high geographic centrality, public transportation performed better.…”

Study of the Structural and Robustness Characteristics of Madrid Metro Network

“…Robustness can be defined as the network's ability to survive random failures or deliberate attacks consisting of the elimination of nodes and/or edges [13]. That is, this characteristic refers to the capacity of the network to solve possible failures by offering alternative routes that overcome the attacked edges or nodes; this is a very important issue when metro networks are analyzed [14]. In this sense, several theoretical and numerical robustness metrics have been proposed to quantitatively determine this characteristic.…”

Research on Spatial Arrangement of Metro Station Floor Facilities Based on Pathfinder

“…Domestic and foreign scholars have studied the factors affecting the evacuation of people in emergencies. For example, Lijuan Hu and other scholars have studied the number of station staff [1][2][3][4][5][6], export conditions and psychological behaviors for emergency evacuation in the subway emergency. Influence: Some scholars have studied the factors such as subway building structure and facility layout.…”