Using network analysis to explore the effects of road network on traffic congestion and retail store sales

Abstract

The physical road system plays a critical role in environmental and city planning. In the context of retail store site-selection, measures of accessibility and the ease and willingness of consumers to shop at a store can be essential to revenue generation and retail success. To quantify accessibility requires a detailed examination of the road networks and in many cases modelling to estimate potential traffic congestion that would inhibit accessibility. The application of network theory to assess the accessibility of road segments and land parcels is non-existent. Research on the effects of the structure of the road network, via network analysis, can facilitate identifying potential congestion issues and subsequently the effects of congestion on commercial performance (e.g., retail sales). The application of network analysis to a road network is distinctive from applications in other disciplines (e.g., sociology, ecology), since, among other network attributes, the road network is a low-dimension, link-centroid, and relatively static system with time-variant traffic flow. In addition to conceptually interrogating the difference between social and road networks for network analysis, the presented research results show the relationship among different network metrics and simulated traffic congestion and the strength of the relationship between network metrics and retail sales relative to socio-demographic and site-location characteristics.