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Distance & area

Drive time map

Pick a starting point and see how far you can get in the time you choose, by car, by bike or on foot, drawn as zones on the map.

Starting point
or tap the map
Travel mode
Minutes (up to 4 zones)

Loading the map…

Routing: FOSSGIS OSRM and Valhalla · data © OpenStreetMap contributors Missing a road? Fix it on OpenStreetMap

Example The White House in Washington. Tap the map or search for a place to see yours.

Area within 30 min by car
407mi²

Reaches up to 21.3 mi as the crow flies

Zones

  • 10 min 6.4 mi² ≤ 3.07 mi
  • 20 min 97.4 mi² ≤ 11.5 mi
  • 30 min 407 mi² ≤ 21.3 mi

Times assume clear roads at each road’s normal speed: they don’t include traffic, lights or stops.

Keep going from this point

More tools to see what’s near you.

Radius mapCompare it with a straight-line circle. Multi-stop route plannerPlan a route through several stops. Population in a radiusHow many people live near a point.

Save or share these zones

How to use it

  1. Choose the starting point

    Search for an address or a place, use your location or tap the map. Tap another point at any time and the zones are worked out again.

  2. Say how you travel and how far

    Choose car, bike or walking, and up to four times (1 to 60 minutes) or distances along the road. Each one shows up as a zone with its own color.

  3. Read the result and share it

    You’ll see each zone’s area and how far it reaches in a straight line. Copy the link to show someone, or download the zones as GeoJSON.

What it’s for

  • House hunting

    Use your office or your kids’ school as the starting point and see which neighborhoods are within a 20-minute drive.

  • Delivery area

    Show how far you can get in half an hour from your store, workshop or kitchen, and share it with customers.

  • Picking a location

    Compare how much ground is within a 10-minute walk of two possible storefronts before you sign a lease.

  • Rides and walks

    See how far you can get in an hour on a bike, or in 15 minutes on foot from home.

How it’s calculated

The zones are calculated by Valhalla, an open-source routing engine, on the OpenStreetMap road network, running on FOSSGIS’s public server. From the starting point it follows every road and path you can use for your travel mode (cars stay off footpaths, bikes stay off freeways), notes how long it takes to reach each stretch, and draws the outline of everything within each time or distance.

By car it uses each road’s normal speed with no traffic; by bike, the speed of an ordinary hybrid bike (about 11 mph, or 18 km/h); and on foot, about 3 mph (5 km/h).

Each zone’s area is measured on the ellipsoid with GeographicLib, like in the area calculator, and its reach is the longest straight-line distance from the starting point to the edge of the zone.

Drive time vs. radius

407 mi² vs. 1,431 mi²

In the White House example, the 30-minute drive zone covers 407 square miles and reaches 21.3 miles in a straight line. A circle with a 21.3-mile radius covers 1,431 square miles, so the zone fills only a little over a quarter of it: roads don’t run in every direction.

What an isochrone is

An isochrone (“same time” in Greek) is the line joining every place you can reach in the same amount of time from a point; everything inside is closer than that. If you use distance traveled along the road instead of time, it’s called an isodistance, and you can draw that here too.

Unlike a radius, an isochrone follows the roads: it stretches along highways, shrinks where there are only back roads, and stops at the coast or at a mountain range with no pass. That’s why it shows much better what is really close to you.

Limits

This tool uses free public services that ask for moderate use: up to 4 zones per map, of 60 minutes or 100 km (62 miles) at most, and one request per second. If the service is busy, wait a moment and try again.

Frequently asked questions

What is a drive time map?

A map that shows how far you can get from a point in a given time: for example, everything within a 15-minute drive. Each time is a zone, and the more time, the bigger the zone. It’s also called an isochrone map.

Does it take traffic into account?

No. It uses each road’s normal speed on a clear road. At rush hour, especially in a city, you won’t get as far as the map shows.

How is it different from a radius map?

A radius is measured in a straight line, as the crow flies; a drive time zone follows streets and roads. In the Washington, D.C. example, the 30-minute zone fills only a little over a quarter of the circle that reaches just as far.

Can I draw it by miles instead of minutes?

Yes. Choose “Distance” and you’ll see how far you get traveling that distance along the road, up to 60 miles (100 km).

Why are there holes inside a zone?

Because some places inside can’t be reached in time: a park or an airport with no roads, a mountain, or a river with no bridge nearby. Very small specks are smoothed out so the map is easier to read.

How do I use the zones in other software?

Download them as GeoJSON: they open in QGIS, geojson.io and most mapping apps, with each zone’s time or distance and area.

Related tools

All tools
Distance between two points Measure the distance between any two places or points on the map, in miles or kilometers. Distance between cities Pick two US cities and get the distance between them, both in a straight line and by road. Distance between ZIP codes Enter two US ZIP codes to get the distance between them and see both areas on the map. Straight line vs driving distance Compare the as-the-crow-flies distance with the real driving distance and see how much the road adds.

Sources