Robustness of the public transport network against attacks on its routes

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the robustness of public transport networks, especially bus routes, against targeted attacks using centrality measures, revealing effective strategies that fragment networks into similarly sized components.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic evaluation of route attack strategies on real and synthetic PTNs, highlighting the effectiveness of betweenness-based attacks.

Findings

Betweenness-based attacks are most effective in fragmenting PTNs.

Betweenness strategy creates components of similar sizes.

Alternative strategies produce one large and several small components.

Abstract

We investigate the robustness of Public Transport Networks (PTNs) when subjected to route attacks, focusing specifically on public bus lines. Such attacks, mirroring real-world scenarios, offer insight into the multifaceted dynamics of cities. Our study delves into the consequences of systematically removing entire routes based on strategies that use centrality measures. We evaluate the network's robustness by analyzing the sizes of fragmented networks, focusing on the largest components and derived metrics. To assess the efficacy of various attack strategies, we employ them on both a synthetic PTN model and a real-world example, specifically the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area in Argentina. We examine these strategies and contrast them with random, and one-step most and least harmful procedures. Our findings indicate that \textit{betweenness}-based attacks and the one-step most (\textit{maximal}) harmful procedure emerge as the most effective attack strategies. Remarkably, the \textit{betweenness} strategy partitions the network into components of similar sizes, whereas alternative approaches yield one dominant and several minor components.