Exploring usage pattern variation of free-floating bike-sharing from a night travel perspective.

Free-floating bike sharing (FFBS) attracts increasing research focusing on usage patterns, determining factors, and integrated transportation. However, existing researchers tend to overlook the variation in usage characteristics over various time ranges, particularly the usage pattern at night. This paper is conducted to fill the gap through a series of analysis approaches on FFSB in Beijing. The characteristics of the usage pattern, including time-varying usage and traveling distance distributions, are initially illustrated. Subsequently, the spatial patterns of FFBS are visualized and thoroughly analyzed in different time ranges and origin-destination (O-D) flows. A statistical model evaluating the environmental effects of FFBS trips revealed the source of FFBS usage. In addition to focusing on the nighttime, the usage patterns varying day and night are compared through the analysis. The findings explain the usage pattern variation and the unique pattern at night, providing valuable insight for improving the management of the FFBS system.

Efficiency in the evolution of metro networks.

Metro systems extended rapidly in China, especially in the last decade, developing over a half-century. This work explores the dynamical evolution of the structural efficiency of metro systems interpreted as complex networks for 14 large cities in mainland China. Based on the empirical observations, we find that the global efficiencies scale with the number of stations and counter-intuitively decreases as the metro networks expand, which shows a long-tail characteristic. The evolution of metro networks is, in essence, the improvement of the relative ratio of average nodal efficiency in the core compared to global efficiency. These relationships are in good agreement with the temporal structure of metro networks. Besides, we find that the metro stations with the higher efficiencies are those surrounding the urban center, and most of them dwell within the core and gradually expand the branches in space. Our findings suggest that the evolution properties of metro systems influenced by numerous geographical, historical, and social activities suggest that underlying, universal mechanisms are at play during their evolution in the spatial-temporal dimension.

Scaling tunable network model to reproduce the density-driven superlinear relation.

Previous works have shown the universality of allometric scaling under total and density values at the city level, but our understanding of the size effects of regions on the universality of allometric scaling remains inadequate. Here, we revisit the scaling relations between the gross domestic production (GDP) and the population based on the total and density values and first reveal that the allometric scaling under density values for different regions is universal. The scaling exponent ß under the density value is in the range of (1.0, 2.0], which unexpectedly exceeds the range observed by Pan et al. [Nat. Commun. 4, 1961 (2013)]. For the wider range, we propose a network model based on a 2D lattice space with the spatial correlation factor α as a parameter. Numerical experiments prove that the generated scaling exponent ß in our model is fully tunable by the spatial correlation factor α. Our model will furnish a general platform for extensive urban and regional studies.