Switch between critical percolation modes in city traffic dynamics

Guanwen Zeng; Daqing Li; Shengmin Guo; Liang Gao; Ziyou Gao; H Eugene Stanley; Shlomo Havlin

doi:10.1073/pnas.1801545116

Switch between critical percolation modes in city traffic dynamics

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Jan 2;116(1):23-28. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1801545116. Epub 2018 Dec 27.

Authors

Guanwen Zeng^{1

2}, Daqing Li^{3

2}, Shengmin Guo⁴, Liang Gao⁵, Ziyou Gao⁶, H Eugene Stanley^{7

8}, Shlomo Havlin⁹

Affiliations

¹ School of Reliability and Systems Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China.
² Science and Technology on Reliability and Environmental Engineering Laboratory, Beijing 100191, China.
³ School of Reliability and Systems Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China; daqingl@buaa.edu.cn zygao@bjtu.edu.cn hes@bu.edu.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Software Development Environment, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China.
⁵ School of Traffic and Transportation, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China.
⁶ School of Traffic and Transportation, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China; daqingl@buaa.edu.cn zygao@bjtu.edu.cn hes@bu.edu.
⁷ Center for Polymer Studies, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215; daqingl@buaa.edu.cn zygao@bjtu.edu.cn hes@bu.edu.
⁸ Physics Department, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215.
⁹ Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel.

Abstract

Percolation transition is widely observed in networks ranging from biology to engineering. While much attention has been paid to network topologies, studies rarely focus on critical percolation phenomena driven by network dynamics. Using extensive real data, we study the critical percolation properties in city traffic dynamics. Our results suggest that two modes of different critical percolation behaviors are switching in the same network topology under different traffic dynamics. One mode of city traffic (during nonrush hours or days off) has similar critical percolation characteristics as small world networks, while the other mode (during rush hours on working days) tends to behave as a 2D lattice. This switching behavior can be understood by the fact that the high-speed urban roads during nonrush hours or days off (that are congested during rush hours) represent effective long-range connections, like in small world networks. Our results might be useful for understanding and improving traffic resilience.

Keywords: critical exponents; percolation; phase transition; switch; traffic.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.