How All Subway Networks are the Same

Many commuters who travel around the world would have noticed there are some ways in which allsubway transportnetworks are similar.

First, there’s the scenery. Whether you’re in New York, Tokyo, London, Seoul or anywhere else, look out the window from inside a subway train carriage and you see pretty much the same thing: a big black wall.

Then, there’s the coziness. Travel through many subway systems on at peak hour on a hot summer’s day and the experience of being squashed up against other sweaty bodies is common to commuters in many different networks in various countries.

Beyond engaging scenery and up-close contact with other members of the human family, however, some scientists over the years have suggested that subway networks bear little resemblance to each other in terms of geometry or decisions relating to their design and structure.

That is partly right, says Marc Barthelemy, a theoretical physicist at France’s Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission. Together with his team, Barthelemy studied all of the subway networks in the world that possess more than 100 stations—including Barcelona, Beijing, Berlin, Chicago, London, Madrid, Mexico, Moscow, New York City, Osaka, Paris, Seoul,Shanghai, and Tokyo...

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