This is a classic application of isochrone maps [1].
I used this Python code [2] to figure out where to live that had a reasonable commute.
However, these do not account for traffic conditions. The paid Google Maps API provides that information however and it is easily incorporated into the code.
Starting near London right clicking the map it then restricted to "France Only" (which I couldn't seem to change) and with 2 hours on a bike the result was a blob somewhere in the English Channel.
It's a very cool concept and definitely has its upsides, but I was a bit disappointed about not being able to choose walking distances or periods of less than 1 hour. Also, the distances in my city (Lisbon) were somewhat unrealistic. Dunno if it works better in larger cities.
Really nice tool - is it using traffic conditions right now? To elaborate, I first entered 4 hrs from Munich, then added another half an hour to it and got a counterintuitive map (see oalley.net/map/b3y): I would have expected the 4:30 hrs map to just extend a little further than the 4 hrs map, but in reality, some parts that I could have reached in 4 hrs are not reachable in 4:30 hrs. Any idea what's going on?
It seems to have issues with paths into or crossing the alps.
No the website is not using traffic conditions.
The test case you have provided to me is very interesting. An heuristic is used to get the area and I think the issue is there.
Without considering traffic it's not overly useful for me. When I put in my address, some of the places it tells me I could reach in an hour, I'd be lucky to reach in 2 most times of the day.
I like the idea - but it isn't working well for my location, at the base of a canyon in Utah, with mountains on 3 sides of me and a big lake on the 4th. It looks like it knows that there are canyons and roads and obstacles that need to be accounted for, but the spikes jutting out from my location don't follow the roads or terrain.
FWIW, the site at: https://maps.openrouteservice.org/reach also fails to compute accurately from my location for an hour, but does work accurately for 50 minutes or less. If nothing else, maybe I'm a good test case?
If it helps, the 3 points going east are probably due to 2 canyons that do go east of town, one of which splits into 2 roads after a mile or so. And many of the others are similar in that, yes, there is a road that would extend your reach in those directions... but not quite where the map is drawing it. There are two areas that are complete anomalies: the path going NE through Springville and the one going SSW towards Levan have zero correlation with any reasonable roads - those both are flying straight over mountain ranges.
https://oalley.net/map/b6j is another pretty poor one. edinburgh to Anstruther is probably closer to 2 hours. North Berwick is more than achieveable in an hour. Callander (in the north west of the map) is closer to 90m.
Another interesting case is going from Key West out. Naples, FL is shown inside the 3 hour range, 110 miles apart as the crow flies. I'm not sure whether it's finding a ferry route, or whether ferries reasonably go that speed, but I thought the results were interesting.
4 hours by car from San Francisco. It says you can't reach South Lake Tahoe, but Google Maps (and my experience) show that it's usually about 3 1/2 hours.
Sharing only so the developer has another test case :)
The three points on the right are only reachable by ferry, so add approximately 1.5 hrs to the travel time. Plus the one at the bottom right would require the driver to pass through the downtown core of the city of Vancouver; even without the ferry time, it wouldn't be possible to do that in under 1 hour from the origin.
It actually does seem to account for ferry routes. I plugged a location in Seattle in and the surface it draws juts across the water to roughly where the ferries dock. Maybe there just isn't a data source for where you're at yet?
The more I am seeing examples, and looking at the terrain, it seems like the problem is that it is only acting on the endpoints, and assuming that the map should simply extend from starting point to ending point, regardless of what is between them. But in the truth, it is quite possible to have an endpoint that cannot be accessed in a straight line because you must circle around a mountain, etc. These maps would need to account for those scenarios.
Yeah, I've seen some strange results as well, such as a large chunk of accessible area jutting through Olympia to Lacey from my starting point in West Seattle where the intervening land is not touched. I don't see how I could get there in 1 hour because the highways all go around the military bases and backwoods there.
There's a similar blob going from Seattle to Preston, which appears to contain some impossible routes where you would get off I-90 and then circle around via highway.
As long as you stay out of the mountains and don't cross any water it seems pretty accurate as a first approximation.
Ya I noticed that looking for 1 hour routes from a city next to Vancouver. It got a bunch right but it said I could get out to Powell River in an hour. It's like a 30 minute drive to the ferry, a 45 minute ferry ride an hour drive down the sunshine coast highway then another ferry to Powell river. Everything else around the lower mainland seemed fairly accurate. Though it depends heavily on which direction you're going, at which time of day. Some of those places would take hours to drive to depending on how bad traffic is.
It also seems to be missing (or hugely over-estimating the travel time over) some bridges in the San Francisco Bay Area. oalley.net/map/b8h, for instance, has a ton of weird sectors.
I put in my work address and a time of one hour. It shows two of my previous home address as being over an hour away. It takes me about 40 - 50 minutes to get to work now from my current address. It took my about an hour from the other address.
Also, there needs to be a way to clear the map. Right now, I'm just overlaying times. I don't know if I'm just missing it on the UI but there needs to be a way to distinguish between adding more areas and replacing an area.
Traffic condition or not taken into account, maybe that is why you did not get what you expected ?
You can remove an area by clicking on remove icon near to it at the bottom left of the webpage (only available on desktop).
I will think about adding a remove all button.
Ok, I see what happened. I had it open on a laptop screen that was 1366 x 768 so the little toolbar things didn't show up. They were below the page. When I moved it to a screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1080, they show up.
Seems like a UI bug, those things disappear when the browser window gets to be a certain height.
Also, I checked the reverse on one of the directions. So from A to B and B to A. One way shows that it is possible to do in an hour, while the reverse shows that it can't be done. While I understand that road conditions may be different in each direction in general, in this specific case, I know the conditions are the same.
There's also some weird artifacts, like parts of roads skipped. Places designated as "an hour away" that are only reachable by first driving through areas designated as unreachable in an hour.
Hopefully the .net domain name is not down, and I don't understand why. I am checking with my web host for the french version.
(Oui je suis basé sur Toulouse)
Very cool idea, but still quite a few bugs even on relatively simple cases. Seems like it gets thrown off by coastlines, borders, and smaller (non-interstate) roads. For example see zigzagging in Virginia and missing coverage between Buffalo and London, ON: https://oalley.net/map/b4l
I love this! I'm in Orlando, Florida which has some rather weird behavior (mostly within the state of Florida, namely going down south), but other than that it is really cool. I think the peninsular shape of Florida is throwing it off a bit.
Pretty neat. It's ignoring some roads when doing it from "Montreal, Québec, Canada" even with 8 hours... It should be going farther east on the south side of the St. Lawrence river towards "Gaspé". Otherwise, it's a really great idea.
I tried using it for US locations, got a little note underneath the search bar saying "France Only". It's true Americans don't like to go out of their way :)
Cool idea but I can easily come up with areas reachable within X minutes but not within X+d minutes... Which would never happen unless you can't slow down! And not in a fancy way; just starting by car from Madrid, Berlin or Paris and looking into main roads.
168 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 204 ms ] threadI used this Python code [2] to figure out where to live that had a reasonable commute.
However, these do not account for traffic conditions. The paid Google Maps API provides that information however and it is easily incorporated into the code.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map
[2] isocronut: https://github.com/drewfustin/isocronut blogpost: http://drewfustin.com/isochrones/
Interesting concept though!
[0] https://maps.openrouteservice.org/reach
https://maps.openrouteservice.org/reach?n1=45.184578&n2=5.77...
It seems to have issues with paths into or crossing the alps.
FWIW, the site at: https://maps.openrouteservice.org/reach also fails to compute accurately from my location for an hour, but does work accurately for 50 minutes or less. If nothing else, maybe I'm a good test case?
If it helps, the 3 points going east are probably due to 2 canyons that do go east of town, one of which splits into 2 roads after a mile or so. And many of the others are similar in that, yes, there is a road that would extend your reach in those directions... but not quite where the map is drawing it. There are two areas that are complete anomalies: the path going NE through Springville and the one going SSW towards Levan have zero correlation with any reasonable roads - those both are flying straight over mountain ranges.
In 8h you can get to Salamanca(East of Barcelona) according to Google Maps, so like half of Spain should be marked.
It's also interesting that according to this, you can get to Monaco(6h 34m on Gmaps) , but no to Marseille (4h 54m on GMaps).
https://oalley.net/map/b8y
4 hours by car from San Francisco. It says you can't reach South Lake Tahoe, but Google Maps (and my experience) show that it's usually about 3 1/2 hours.
https://oalley.net/map/bd7
https://oalley.net/map/b4y
Sharing only so the developer has another test case :)
The three points on the right are only reachable by ferry, so add approximately 1.5 hrs to the travel time. Plus the one at the bottom right would require the driver to pass through the downtown core of the city of Vancouver; even without the ferry time, it wouldn't be possible to do that in under 1 hour from the origin.
https://oalley.net/map/b7p
There's a similar blob going from Seattle to Preston, which appears to contain some impossible routes where you would get off I-90 and then circle around via highway.
As long as you stay out of the mountains and don't cross any water it seems pretty accurate as a first approximation.
Edit: but it did work if I lowered the time. Interesting work though.
I put in my work address and a time of one hour. It shows two of my previous home address as being over an hour away. It takes me about 40 - 50 minutes to get to work now from my current address. It took my about an hour from the other address.
Also, there needs to be a way to clear the map. Right now, I'm just overlaying times. I don't know if I'm just missing it on the UI but there needs to be a way to distinguish between adding more areas and replacing an area.
Seems like a UI bug, those things disappear when the browser window gets to be a certain height.
Also, I checked the reverse on one of the directions. So from A to B and B to A. One way shows that it is possible to do in an hour, while the reverse shows that it can't be done. While I understand that road conditions may be different in each direction in general, in this specific case, I know the conditions are the same.
There's also some weird artifacts, like parts of roads skipped. Places designated as "an hour away" that are only reachable by first driving through areas designated as unreachable in an hour.
(Vous êtes basés à Toulouse ?)
The most basic usage is missing!
But whis works: https://maps.openrouteservice.org/reach
IsochrOnes. Catchment areas are something different.