6 ms·

TimeMaps (2017)

143 points by metayrnc 3y ago

pushcx 3y ago
For more info and examples, the term for this is "isochrone map": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map
m_eiman 3y ago
I like the idea, but find the color bands a bit distracting since they're obviuusly incorrect - actual travel times are going to be shorter to navigation hubs and longer the further out in the network you get. It'd be more complicated to implement, of course!
- Freak_NL 3y ago
  This is why for this kind of map the geography is usually left as-is in one of the usual common projections, with a colour scale marking the time-distance, rather than distorting the geography.
- petercooper 3y ago
  Agreed. These might be nice to have on the wall, but there are a lot of projects that have produced accurate maps over the years. A Google for "travel time map" brings up loads, such as https://app.traveltime.com/ https://app.traveltime.com/ which lets you make your own.
Freak_NL 3y ago
> Due to the good public transportation in the Netherlands distance has become irrelevant. We can reach almost any destination by train easily and relatively quick. Well that would be nice, but unfortunately not true. Our public transport is tolerable, but Covid accelerated drastic cuts in the bus lines out in the country that (used to) go where trains don't. This has lead to the creation of 'on call' buses which you can reserve in advance if you want to go to one of the villages affected, but which mean that the projected itinerary can only be achieved in ideal conditions. Normally, if one link in your public transport journey is delayed, you just take the next train or bus, but with these on-call buses you are now missing the last leg of the journey, and have to wait at least on hour for the next opportunity (minimum time between reservation and minibus appearing). These maps don't account for this, because it is focused on train travel and the time-distance to stations. This time-maps are fun, but typical Amsterdam-centric thinking. And don't even bother trying to visit any bucolic place without train stations on a Sunday. On the whole, public transport in the Netherlands, trains included, are not in a very good position¹. Partly due to the after effects of corona, partly due to a car-focused government. 1: Relative to neighbouring countries and pre-Covid conditions of course. This is still paradise compared to some countries.
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  > At the same time, seen from a more remote and small village such as Stavoren the Netherlands is much bigger.
  - gerad 3y ago
    I just spent a week in Aalsmeer, which is a 40 minute bike ride from Amsterdam (or a 40 minute drive). Since it doesn’t have a train station it was inconvenient to get anywhere without a car. That said, if you are near a train station, pretty much all the major cities are within 30ish minutes of one another. That said, I think it’s more a function of the Netherlands being a small, flat and dense country than having great public transit. You could probably bike between most major cities in less than 90 minutes.
    - Freak_NL 3y ago
      Interesting view of the Netherlands, but you can't reach most of the ten largest cities in the Netherlands within 30 minutes by train or 90 by bicycle from most of the other cities. Eindhoven, Groningen, Tilburg, Breda, Nijmegen are all quite a distance from Amsterdam, and even the rail journey from Almere to Rotterdam takes over an hour.
  - Freak_NL 3y ago
    The tiny town (not village) of Stavoren is fortunate enough to actually have a train station (not to mention a ferry link to Enkhuizen). That it still has a train link is a miracle in itself. A lot of those lines were on a razor's edge in the nineties, and if they had gotten replaced by buses (as was considered even for the larger towns of Harlingen and Franeker) they would have been harmed quite a lot by now (significant loss of tourism and being less attractive to live in). Try Lollum, Burdaard, or Earnewâld by bus! Similar in population to Stavoren, no train, no dedicated bus line (anymore).
- skrebbel 3y ago
  I disagree. Lots of small towns have excellent train and bus connections. The idea that proper public transport only exists in and around Amsterdam is preposterous and, well, simply not true. I agree that service to real small towns has gotten worse, and I agree that that’s stupid. But a large share of NL’s 400 train stations are in small towns too. Bus service to Tynaarlo going to shit does not mean that “public transportation time distance” is a useless, or “Amsterdam-centric” measure.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
esquevin 3y ago
Reminded me of this map of france https://i0.wp.com/www.isoul.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/scnf-time-distance-map.jpg https://i0.wp.com/www.isoul.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/s...
- lucb1e 3y ago
  ^shows an outline of the real france overlaid with the shape it would have when 'defined' by train times. Nice map! Curious about that URL, why does it proxy the content at https://www.isoul.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/scnf-time-distance-map.jpg https://www.isoul.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/scnf-time-d... ?
distcs 3y ago
> Due to the good public transportation in the Netherlands distance has become irrelevant. Is there some kind of global index that measures how good public transportation is in major cities of the world? It'd be interesting to which cities rank at the top. Can I request the well-traveled to share on this thread which cities they found to have the most excellent public transportation?
- bjelkeman-again 3y ago
  Tokyo, London, Berlin, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Paris, are all very good. There are obviously many more, but these I am quite familiar with.
- berkes 3y ago
  Such a metric needs quite some thought, though. What is "good public transport"? A tiny village with 24 souls and one busline will probably have more "public transport opportunities per capita" than Tokyo. A very dense city has lower travel times than a spread out (or mountainous) city even if their "amount of PT" is exactly the same. As such, "good public transportation" either needs an entire bookwork to describe the metrics (and is therefore rather unusable), or is just a highly subjective metric.
darkstarsys 3y ago
There are better isochrones out there. I like this one for Boston: https://www.mapnificent.net/boston/#12/42.3584/-71.0598/2820/42.3584/-71.0598 https://www.mapnificent.net/boston/#12/42.3584/-71.0598/2820...
pickledish 3y ago
Pretty similar idea but for NYC, I also like this one a bit more since it accounts for actual subway stops + walking, etc: https://subwaysheds.com/stop/g34/classon-av https://subwaysheds.com/stop/g34/classon-av
mlok 3y ago
Good idea. But not easily usable. The map distortion is funny and impressive but not practical. The (arbitrary) colored circles should be distorted to bring information, not the (familiar) map itself. We need the map to stay familiar so people are able to easily use this.
- vegabook 3y ago
  Precisely. In fact the same time variable is being redundantly mapped to two visual dimensions, where one, colour, would have sufficed.
ajaimk 3y ago
I’m a big fan of http://commutetimemap.com http://commutetimemap.com Same concept but using an actual map with time mapped to different modes of transportation from any address.
- bjelkeman-again 3y ago
  That one was interesting, but seems to be missing some data about regional trains in Sweden. Even though commuter trains around Stockholm seem reasonably correct.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
psychphysic 3y ago
Heh just yesterday I was trying to work out how to make something like that for myself. Isochrone map and cartogram are interesting terms to lookup if desired.
larodi 3y ago
Isochrone should follow the transport graph and is not just a nested circles (aka buffer) going out of centroid of shape… this article is somewhat misleading and also a bit sensational since people been doing isochrone analysis and maps for decades
KineticLensman 3y ago
I remember seeing an isochrone map of the time it would take to reach different parts of the world in 1900, with London as a start point. I can't remember the actual times but it took weeks to get to Australia, and then additional weeks to get into the interior (few road and railways at then). It emphasized that travel to a foreign country, let alone emigrating, was massively more complex than today.
wcedmisten 3y ago
For generating an isochrone map anywhere in the world, I'm a big fan of this demo page: https://valhalla.openstreetmap.de/isochrones?profile=bicycle&range=10&interval=10 https://valhalla.openstreetmap.de/isochrones?profile=bicycle...
sorokod 3y ago
Super cool, here is an app I'd like to see: Me and friends are in [Location] and are willing to travel no longer then [Time] to [some activity] - show all recommended places for [some activity] within radius [Time]
YkarinoKI 3y ago
In Japan, there exists a similar map created in 1970s by Yasuhira Sugiura (designer). It's not in English, but the image below depicts Japan from Hokkaido to Okinawa. The upper part is centered on Tokyo. The lower part is centered on Osaka. http://kousin242.sakura.ne.jp/maruhei/fff/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2015/04/068.jpg http://kousin242.sakura.ne.jp/maruhei/fff/wp-content/uploads...
bckr 3y ago
How would folks recommend implementing visualizations like this? I'm willing to program at a layer or two beneath "make an isochrone graph". My interests are more for visualizing embedding spaces such as those produced by RAVE or other VAEs.
MattGrommes 3y ago
One thing I noticed when moving from San Diego to Albuquerque as a teen was how normal it was in Southern California to answer the question "How far is X?" with the answer "30 minutes". That was due to freeways and traffic rather than public transit but I definitely get the idea of these kinds of maps.

TimeMaps (2017)

143 points by metayrnc 3y ago

For more info and examples, the term for this is "isochrone map": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map

m_eiman 3y ago

I like the idea, but find the color bands a bit distracting since they're obviuusly incorrect - actual travel times are going to be shorter to navigation hubs and longer the further out in the network you get. It'd be more complicated to implement, of course!

Freak_NL 3y ago
This is why for this kind of map the geography is usually left as-is in one of the usual common projections, with a colour scale marking the time-distance, rather than distorting the geography.
petercooper 3y ago
Agreed. These might be nice to have on the wall, but there are a lot of projects that have produced accurate maps over the years. A Google for "travel time map" brings up loads, such as https://app.traveltime.com/ https://app.traveltime.com/ which lets you make your own.

Freak_NL 3y ago

> Due to the good public transportation in the Netherlands distance has become irrelevant. We can reach almost any destination by train easily and relatively quick. Well that would be nice, but unfortunately not true. Our public transport is tolerable, but Covid accelerated drastic cuts in the bus lines out in the country that (used to) go where trains don't. This has lead to the creation of 'on call' buses which you can reserve in advance if you want to go to one of the villages affected, but which mean that the projected itinerary can only be achieved in ideal conditions. Normally, if one link in your public transport journey is delayed, you just take the next train or bus, but with these on-call buses you are now missing the last leg of the journey, and have to wait at least on hour for the next opportunity (minimum time between reservation and minibus appearing). These maps don't account for this, because it is focused on train travel and the time-distance to stations. This time-maps are fun, but typical Amsterdam-centric thinking. And don't even bother trying to visit any bucolic place without train stations on a Sunday. On the whole, public transport in the Netherlands, trains included, are not in a very good position¹. Partly due to the after effects of corona, partly due to a car-focused government. 1: Relative to neighbouring countries and pre-Covid conditions of course. This is still paradise compared to some countries.

amadeuspagel 3y ago
> At the same time, seen from a more remote and small village such as Stavoren the Netherlands is much bigger.
- gerad 3y ago
  I just spent a week in Aalsmeer, which is a 40 minute bike ride from Amsterdam (or a 40 minute drive). Since it doesn’t have a train station it was inconvenient to get anywhere without a car. That said, if you are near a train station, pretty much all the major cities are within 30ish minutes of one another. That said, I think it’s more a function of the Netherlands being a small, flat and dense country than having great public transit. You could probably bike between most major cities in less than 90 minutes.
  - Freak_NL 3y ago
    Interesting view of the Netherlands, but you can't reach most of the ten largest cities in the Netherlands within 30 minutes by train or 90 by bicycle from most of the other cities. Eindhoven, Groningen, Tilburg, Breda, Nijmegen are all quite a distance from Amsterdam, and even the rail journey from Almere to Rotterdam takes over an hour.
- Freak_NL 3y ago
  The tiny town (not village) of Stavoren is fortunate enough to actually have a train station (not to mention a ferry link to Enkhuizen). That it still has a train link is a miracle in itself. A lot of those lines were on a razor's edge in the nineties, and if they had gotten replaced by buses (as was considered even for the larger towns of Harlingen and Franeker) they would have been harmed quite a lot by now (significant loss of tourism and being less attractive to live in). Try Lollum, Burdaard, or Earnewâld by bus! Similar in population to Stavoren, no train, no dedicated bus line (anymore).
skrebbel 3y ago
I disagree. Lots of small towns have excellent train and bus connections. The idea that proper public transport only exists in and around Amsterdam is preposterous and, well, simply not true. I agree that service to real small towns has gotten worse, and I agree that that’s stupid. But a large share of NL’s 400 train stations are in small towns too. Bus service to Tynaarlo going to shit does not mean that “public transportation time distance” is a useless, or “Amsterdam-centric” measure.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

esquevin 3y ago

Reminded me of this map of france https://i0.wp.com/www.isoul.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/scnf-time-distance-map.jpg https://i0.wp.com/www.isoul.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/s...

lucb1e 3y ago
^shows an outline of the real france overlaid with the shape it would have when 'defined' by train times. Nice map! Curious about that URL, why does it proxy the content at https://www.isoul.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/scnf-time-distance-map.jpg https://www.isoul.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/scnf-time-d... ?

distcs 3y ago

> Due to the good public transportation in the Netherlands distance has become irrelevant. Is there some kind of global index that measures how good public transportation is in major cities of the world? It'd be interesting to which cities rank at the top. Can I request the well-traveled to share on this thread which cities they found to have the most excellent public transportation?

bjelkeman-again 3y ago
Tokyo, London, Berlin, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Paris, are all very good. There are obviously many more, but these I am quite familiar with.
berkes 3y ago
Such a metric needs quite some thought, though. What is "good public transport"? A tiny village with 24 souls and one busline will probably have more "public transport opportunities per capita" than Tokyo. A very dense city has lower travel times than a spread out (or mountainous) city even if their "amount of PT" is exactly the same. As such, "good public transportation" either needs an entire bookwork to describe the metrics (and is therefore rather unusable), or is just a highly subjective metric.

darkstarsys 3y ago

There are better isochrones out there. I like this one for Boston: https://www.mapnificent.net/boston/#12/42.3584/-71.0598/2820/42.3584/-71.0598 https://www.mapnificent.net/boston/#12/42.3584/-71.0598/2820...

pickledish 3y ago

Pretty similar idea but for NYC, I also like this one a bit more since it accounts for actual subway stops + walking, etc: https://subwaysheds.com/stop/g34/classon-av https://subwaysheds.com/stop/g34/classon-av

mlok 3y ago

Good idea. But not easily usable. The map distortion is funny and impressive but not practical. The (arbitrary) colored circles should be distorted to bring information, not the (familiar) map itself. We need the map to stay familiar so people are able to easily use this.

vegabook 3y ago
Precisely. In fact the same time variable is being redundantly mapped to two visual dimensions, where one, colour, would have sufficed.

ajaimk 3y ago

I’m a big fan of http://commutetimemap.com http://commutetimemap.com Same concept but using an actual map with time mapped to different modes of transportation from any address.

bjelkeman-again 3y ago
That one was interesting, but seems to be missing some data about regional trains in Sweden. Even though commuter trains around Stockholm seem reasonably correct.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

psychphysic 3y ago

Heh just yesterday I was trying to work out how to make something like that for myself. Isochrone map and cartogram are interesting terms to lookup if desired.

larodi 3y ago

Isochrone should follow the transport graph and is not just a nested circles (aka buffer) going out of centroid of shape… this article is somewhat misleading and also a bit sensational since people been doing isochrone analysis and maps for decades

KineticLensman 3y ago

I remember seeing an isochrone map of the time it would take to reach different parts of the world in 1900, with London as a start point. I can't remember the actual times but it took weeks to get to Australia, and then additional weeks to get into the interior (few road and railways at then). It emphasized that travel to a foreign country, let alone emigrating, was massively more complex than today.

wcedmisten 3y ago

For generating an isochrone map anywhere in the world, I'm a big fan of this demo page: https://valhalla.openstreetmap.de/isochrones?profile=bicycle&range=10&interval=10 https://valhalla.openstreetmap.de/isochrones?profile=bicycle...

sorokod 3y ago

Super cool, here is an app I'd like to see: Me and friends are in [Location] and are willing to travel no longer then [Time] to [some activity] - show all recommended places for [some activity] within radius [Time]

YkarinoKI 3y ago

In Japan, there exists a similar map created in 1970s by Yasuhira Sugiura (designer). It's not in English, but the image below depicts Japan from Hokkaido to Okinawa. The upper part is centered on Tokyo. The lower part is centered on Osaka. http://kousin242.sakura.ne.jp/maruhei/fff/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2015/04/068.jpg http://kousin242.sakura.ne.jp/maruhei/fff/wp-content/uploads...

bckr 3y ago

How would folks recommend implementing visualizations like this? I'm willing to program at a layer or two beneath "make an isochrone graph". My interests are more for visualizing embedding spaces such as those produced by RAVE or other VAEs.

MattGrommes 3y ago

One thing I noticed when moving from San Diego to Albuquerque as a teen was how normal it was in Southern California to answer the question "How far is X?" with the answer "30 minutes". That was due to freeways and traffic rather than public transit but I definitely get the idea of these kinds of maps.