Topological Effects on the Performance of Transportation Networks

We investigate the influence of the network topology on the performance (characterized by the total system cost and maximal traffic volume) of transportation networks, where the weights are not static (constant), but dynamic (a function of the flow on the link). Four classes of networks are used in the simulation, including regular networks, random networks, small-world networks and scale-free networks. The initial simulation results show that topologies play important roles on the performance of transportation networks, and random networks have better performance than other networks. Also, we find that there are distinct difference of the link flow distribution for various networks in both the distribution function form and the span between the minimum and the maximum of the link flow, explaining the difference of the performance among distinct networks. These findings will be useful in network design problems of transportation systems.