Since its recent introduction, the small-world effect has been identified in
several important real-world systems. Frequently, it is a consequence of the
existence of a few long-range connections, which dominate the original regular
structure of the systems and implies each node to become accessible from other
nodes after a small number of steps, typically of order ℓ∝logN.
However, this effect has been observed in pure-topological networks, where the
nodes have no spatial coordinates. In this paper, we present an alalogue of
small-world effect observed in real-world transportation networks, where the
nodes are embeded in a hree-dimensional space. Using the multidimensional
scaling method, we demonstrate how the addition of a few long-range connections
can suubstantially reduce the travel time in transportation systems. Also, we
investigated the importance of long-range connections when the systems are
under an attack process. Our findings are illustrated for two real-world
systems, namely the London urban network (streets and underground) and the US
highways network enhanced by some of the main US airlines routes