Street Hierarchies: A Minority of Streets Account for a Majority of Traffic Flow

Urban streets are hierarchically organized in the sense that a majority of streets are trivial, while a minority of streets are vital. This hierarchy can be simply, but elegantly, characterized by the 80/20 principle (i.e., 80% of streets are less connected [below the average], while 20% of streets are well connected [above the average]); out of the 20%, there are 1% of streets that are extremely well connected. This paper, using a European city as an example, examined, at a much more detailed level, such street hierarchies from the perspective of geometric and topological properties. Based on an empirical study, the authors further prove a previous conjecture that a minority of streets accounts for a majority of traffic flow; more accurately, the 20% of top streets accommodate 80% of traffic flow (20/80), and the 1% of top streets account for more than 20% of traffic flow (1/20). This study provides new evidence as to how a city is (self-)organized, contributing to the understanding of cities and their evolution using increasingly available mobility geographic information.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • Abstract reprinted with permission from Taylor and Francis
• Authors:
  • Jiang, Bin
• Publication Date: 2009-8

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Print
• Features: References;
• Pagination: pp 1033-1048
• Serial:
  • Volume: 23
  • Issue Number: 8

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Cities; Network analysis (Planning); Streets; Traffic flow; Urban areas
• Geographic Terms: Europe
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01138948
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Aug 31 2009 9:24AM