Map of all points below a certain time of travel?

Question

My question is very simple and can be understood in one line:

Is there a way, tool, etc. using Google Maps to get an overlay of all surface which is below a certain time of travel?

I hope the question is clear, but I coulnd't find anything related on the web.

If you have any information, I'll take it!

Here is what I mean illustrated by an example:

I search for a new place to live. I know the precise address of my office. I would in this case be able to overlay on Google Maps the surface which is under a certain time of travel (let's say 30 minuts by car). We would have a long surface colored around motorways (because you get faster), and colors around roads.

Minne

It is unclear what you mean by surface. Are you talking geology here? Or something else? – Kohler

Please define "time of travel", travel by what?(the speed should be important) – Capricecapricious

It appears I'm not as clear as I thought :) – Minne

For information, I found later that the name of such a thing is called "isochrones". – Minne

Answer 1

I think you are looking for something like Mapnificient: it shows you areas you can reach with public transportation in a given time (video).

A similar site with even more options is How Far Can I Travel. Here you can choose between inputting your speed of travel and a travel time OR a distance. Optionally, you can also specify how accurate you want the results to be.

Now, how to create such examples yourself? See this related question where the accepted answer explains step-by-step, how you can get travel time data from the Google Maps API.

Finally, for $8.75, you can buy the article Stata utilities for geocoding and generating travel time and travel distance information by Adam Ozimek and Daniel Miles that describes traveltime, a command that uses Google Maps to provide spatial information for data.

The traveltime command takes latitude and longitude information and finds travel distances between points, as well as the time it would take to travel that distance by either driving, walking, or using public transportation.

Eugenioeugenius

Thanks for an answer with so much details. Actually, you almost get the fun out of it, as apparently what I wanted to develop has already been done . . . I'll have to find another idea ! – Minne

Well, implementing it yourself is a great learning experience in itself. You could see where the current implementations lack and try to improve on them. – Eugenioeugenius

None of the existing solutions seem to work for my city so there is sitll room for another development. – Seal

Answer 2

Other than the ones in @BioGeek answer, here are some more:

Nokia Here Maps API can give you the exact shape of the output. They call it time-based isoline. See here: Requesting a time based isoline

For travel times under 10 minutes, Isoscope is available at this address.

Also this looks promising: Route360

Update:

Route360 can be used for free in the following places:

• Africa

• Austria

• Australia and New Zealand

• British Isles

• British Columbia

• Czech Republic

• Denmark

• France

• Germany

• Italy

• Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei

• Mexico

• Norway

• Portugal

• Spain

• Sweden

• Switzerland

• USA

Intendment

Route 360 looks indeed interesting. The issue is that they currently only are available in Germany :). – Minne

This has changed. The service can be used for free (until a certain limit of request) in Denmark, British Isles, Norway, Canada, Switzerland, France. See the list here. The US will become available shortly (next week or so). – Tallie

Route360° has changed its name to Targomo, and the dead links above can now be found: - Developer Center - Coverage Map (couldn't edit the actual answer...) – Nuclei

Answer 3

I think you are looking for the Google Distance Matrix API. It returns not routes, but duration and distance for each pair of origin and destination. It has a usage limit of 100 elements per 10 seconds.

So you can make an educated guess about the distance that matches the desired time of travel, choose six or eight equally distributed points on a circle of that radius, and query the corresponding durations. Then refine the distances according to the results and calculate intermediary points. This way you can get a (quite rough) map in a few iterations.

Judejudea

Answer 4

I don't think there is a simple way of doing this, but here's an idea:

You'd need to first get the long/lat coordinates of your start position. You will then need to work out say, 50 coordinates around that start position that are say, 1 kilometer away from it (the answer here can help). You'd then need to traverse around each of these points and ask for the driving time to get there from your start position using Google Driving Directions API.

You'd then need to traverse the points again to find the points that are below the time of travel allowed (e.g. 30 mins in your question), move these points another kilometer or so away (in the same direction that the point originally moved from the start position) and repeat the driving time request until all are above the time of travel allowed. Finally you end up with 50 coordinates which you can plot onto a Google Maps image as a polygon using the Google Javascript API for mapping polygons.

This method requires a lot of requests to Google so you'll need to think about Google's limit on the number of requests you can do a day.

Oconnor

Thanks for the answer. The was the kind of idea I also had, while knowing if was completely requests-unefficient. Thanks for the links ! – Minne

By the way, I work with google app engine, so I don't think javascript a good way of doing it. I work with python – Minne

Answer 5

You can use the GraphHopper Directions API - this API part is also open source.

As we've added public transit and this feature recently it currently does not work together. But this is planned and until then you can enjoy road network isochrones :)

Disclaimer: I'm one of the GraphHopper founders.

Lambency

Answer 6

You can draw a circle around your current position and check for a road at an angle every X degrees.

Another idea is to use a contour plot and isolines.

Robby

Man, you exactly have what I wanted to develop ^^. Coulnd't find it on the web though. Is your code open source, can I use it? – Minne

@jlengrand: It's not from me and there isn't any information about the licence. It's not very complicated to copy the math. At every X degree it ask google directions api if the point of the circle returns a waypoint. – Robby

Yes, but being a total newbie with both google apis and web development, this is like a huge help. Couldn't find any information concerning the licence either – Minne

unfortunately, it looks like this link is dead now. – Biochemistry