Gravity model in the Korean highway

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that traffic flows between cities in Korea follow a gravity model based on population and distance, revealing insights into the network's structure and comparing it with air and public transportation systems.

Contribution

It shows that Korean highway traffic flows adhere to a gravity model and analyzes the network's homogeneous structure compared to inhomogeneous air and public transport systems.

Findings

Traffic flow follows a gravity model P(i)P(j)/r(ij)^2.

Highway network has a heavy tail despite uniform structure.

Air and public transport systems exhibit power-law behaviors.

Abstract

We investigate the traffic flows of the Korean highway system, which contains both public and private transportation information. We find that the traffic flow T(ij) between city i and j forms a gravity model, the metaphor of physical gravity as described in Newton's law of gravity, P(i)P(j)/r(ij)^2, where P(i) represents the population of city i and r(ij) the distance between cities i and j. It is also shown that the highway network has a heavy tail even though the road network is a rather uniform and homogeneous one. Compared to the highway network, air and public ground transportation establish inhomogeneous systems and have power-law behaviors.