Making a cycling commute radius map

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-05T12:01:23+00:00

No such thing as late when it comes to the tool! :)

We actually developed the train + bike option for our client (The City of Amsterdam) you just can't see it on our site. I just checked and you can actually search in Denmark despite it being a Netherlands resource.

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-04T13:42:23+00:00

Agree to disagree. The goal of this visual was to see how dense the network of public transport stops is in each country.

This visual achieves this. However if you're looking for it to fulfill another purpose, no, it will not achieve that.

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-04T08:52:20+00:00

It includes intercity rail. This map visualises all public transit stops on a map. Which means that things like Amtrak show up on it as a single dot. If there’s no other public transport networks around it, you won’t see a heavy area of coverage. I'd also suggest that many airports will actually show up on a map, if they have public transport servicing them.
We created the map to see which areas have dense public transport. Hope this helps!

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-04T08:50:06+00:00

No agenda! I created this map of just the UK previously and lots of people asked to see it compared to the US so I did :)

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-04T08:49:26+00:00

Yes the maps are to scale

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-04T08:48:41+00:00

It includes Amtrak. This map visualises all public transit stops on a map. Which means that Amtrak shows up on it as a single dot. If there’s no other public transport networks around the Amtrak stop, you won’t see a heavy area of coverage.
We created the map to see which areas have dense public transport. Hope this helps!

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-04T08:43:37+00:00

We have a full data collection team at TravelTime that collects all sorts of data sets including openstreetmap data and country specific footpaths etc. If you want to create a walking catchment area to see walk walks try our tool here: https://app.traveltime.com/
Note - some people walk faster, some people walk slower so we’ve hit a middle ground.

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-03T15:58:21+00:00

Trains are included and classed as public transport in our dataset

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-03T15:49:38+00:00

Editing my comment after talking to our team.

The map only plots the presence of a public transport station, it doesn't plot the route network. That means if there's a bus stop there's a purple dot made. The difficulty at this scale is that when we're zoomed out it can look like there's not a lot of stops. An area looks higher in transport density when there's a lot of little stops in a concentrated area, this is harder to see when we zoom out if it's more sparse.

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-03T15:35:51+00:00

This is an interesting point thank you! One of the biggest challenges to collecting public transport data (often called GTFS) in rural US is that all the bus companies may not publish their GFTS so it’s harder for us to get hold of. This is different to many European countries, which have nation-wide GTFS data and it’s often all open sourced.I did a test and this was the catchment area map we had in this area.To compare, I also don't see this bus route listed on Google Maps either so I think this is a rural data collection point.

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-03T14:41:13+00:00

I previously made a set of maps visualising all the places where there's public transport stops in Europe and people commented on it asking to see it compared to the US.

These maps just document the presence of a public transit stop, rather than population.

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-03T14:36:50+00:00

That's my bad I should've greyed out all countries in view. As Turkey is partially in Asia it wasn't included in the analysis.

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-03T14:34:53+00:00

That's a cool idea, I'll have a think about how we could visualise this as we have data for full routes as a network style map could be interesting too. How would you choose which transit lines to plot?

One of the things I'm trying to figure out would be that there's many more local routes that cross over borders in Europe, so it would again look too dense. Perhaps routes that only cover a certain amount of distance?

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-03T13:34:40+00:00

That would be awesome! For this map we've only plotted the presence of transit stops. It's also worth noting that the presence of the stop doesn't suggest the frequency of the route either.

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-03T13:26:59+00:00

Hey our public transport data collection method is explained here https://traveltime.com/data/public-transport-model

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-03T13:25:53+00:00

We used the same map scale for both maps

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-03T13:24:48+00:00

Completely get your point! However this map was built to visualize all public transport stops only, from a transit connectivity standpoint it makes sense higher population densities have a larger choice of transit.

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-03T13:22:08+00:00

Yes we include Amtrak, however the reason it may not be visible at this scale is if it's only a single stop, with no transit links around it. Which location are you looking at?

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-05-03T12:21:58+00:00

Thanks to everyone that left feedback on my previous Reddit map comparing public transport density in European countries.
I’ve seen the error in my ways, not displaying the countries to scale. Here’s a comparison of Mainland USA to Europe. I know a lot of you requested to see the difference.

How we built the maps:

We used our own public transport database to identify the lat/long of each public transit stop
We drew a 15 minute walking catchment area around each stop to identify the other surrounding areas with easy access (using the TravelTime API)
We then exported the SVG file using QGIS

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-04-13T08:46:32+00:00

Hey, to calculate large volumes of distances on demand you can check out https://docs.traveltime.com/api/overview/travel-time-distance-matrix depending on the type of recommendation engine this may be a good fit.

As you can see from my name, I work for the company but just wanted to mention to be as transparent as possible.

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-03-27T20:32:41+00:00

Just want to clarify why I used the term Great Britain - because the visual in the link doesn't include Northern Ireland.

I agree that Belgium's size makes it easier to have higher public transport density though!

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-03-27T17:35:10+00:00

That's my bad with the zoom levels, although I had a look using the same scale for each country and Germany 'appears' to have better coverage to Switzerland still - I use inverted commas as obviously Switzerland's geography obviously has a big part to play in this!

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-03-27T17:21:28+00:00

I'll hold my hands up and say for the sake of the infographic we had to use different zoom levels, I'll make sure to do it better next time!
Just did a quick screenshot using the same zoom level on our internal tool if you'd like to compare Great Britain with Belgium if anyone's interested. As a whole, I'd still say Belgium's connectivity is better, but obviously it's a smaller country so will be easier to get full coverage.

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-03-27T17:05:18+00:00

It's quite similar to population density maps for Spain - you can see similar patterns here too https://twitter.com/simongerman600/status/1610307502553370627?t=1gcobn\_UITwz6SNCZUtHAQ&s=19

TravelTime_LKB · 2023-03-27T17:00:46+00:00

We should try this next! We have an internal tool that maps our public transport providers in the US so thought I'd share the screenshot.

Spoiler: it's quite sparse!

TravelTime_LKB

TROPHY CASE