The edge-disjoint paths problem is NP-complete for series-parallel graphs

Many combinatorial problems are NP-complete for general graphs. However, when restricted to series–parallel graphs or partial k-trees, many of these problems can be solved in polynomial time, mostly in linear time. On the other hand, very few problems are known to be NP-complete for series–parallel graphs or partial k-trees. These include the subgraph isomorphism problem and the bandwidth problem. However, these problems are NP-complete even for trees. In this paper, we show that the edge-disjoint paths problem is NP-complete for series–parallel graphs and for partial 2-trees although the problem is trivial for trees and can be solved for outerplanar graphs in polynomial time. ? 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.