The network model of urban subway networks with community structure

In this paper, we present the empirical investigation results for the urban subway networks in China. The results show that all the urban subway networks have high clustering coefficient and small character path length, which exhibit a small-world behavior, the degree distributions take multiplicative exponential function forms. Otherwise, these networks are hierarchically organized by overlapping cliques, which are all the globally coupled networks. To explain these results, we introduce a network model, which is in good agreement with the empirical results; in addition, this model can explain the evolutionary procedure of other networks, such as the urban bus transport networks or the film actor networks.