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Scaling laws in the spatial structure of urban road networks

Author

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  • Lämmer, Stefan
  • Gehlsen, Björn
  • Helbing, Dirk

Abstract

The urban road networks of the 20 largest German cities have been analysed, based on a detailed database providing the geographical positions as well as the travel-times for network sizes up to 37,000 nodes and 87,000 links. As the human driver recognises travel-times rather than distances, faster roads appear to be ‘shorter’ than slower ones. The resulting metric space has an effective dimension δ>2, which is a significant measure of the heterogeneity of road speeds. We found that traffic strongly concentrates on only a small fraction of the roads. The distribution of vehicular flows over the roads obeys a power law, indicating a clear hierarchical order of the roads. Studying the cellular structure of the areas enclosed by the roads, the distribution of cell sizes is scale invariant as well.

Suggested Citation

  • Lämmer, Stefan & Gehlsen, Björn & Helbing, Dirk, 2006. "Scaling laws in the spatial structure of urban road networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 363(1), pages 89-95.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:363:y:2006:i:1:p:89-95
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2006.01.051
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