Small-world properties of the Indian Railway network

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the Indian Railway network as a complex system, revealing it exhibits small-world properties and providing insights into its structural characteristics.

Contribution

It is the first comprehensive study applying complex network analysis to the Indian Railway system, highlighting its small-world nature and related structural features.

Findings

The Indian Railway network has small-world properties.

The network exhibits high clustering and short path lengths.

Structural quantities characteristic of complex networks are estimated.

Abstract

Structural properties of the Indian Railway network is studied in the light of recent investigations of the scaling properties of different complex networks. Stations are considered as `nodes' and an arbitrary pair of stations is said to be connected by a `link' when at least one train stops at both stations. Rigorous analysis of the existing data shows that the Indian Railway network displays small-world properties. We define and estimate several other quantities associated with this network.