Isochrone Map Generator: How to Create Isochrone Maps (& Why You Should)

Isochrone maps are a great way to see all the locations you can reach within a time limit by a specific mode of transport. With TravelTime's free isochrone map generator, you can create isochrones to show all the areas you can reach within a given travel time by different modes of transport.

This is a free online travel time map for solving quick location queries, with public transport isochrone maps, H3, and points of interest included.

But the free generator is not the only way to create isochrones.

With the TravelTime Isochrone API, you can make more complex isochrones and create thousands of travel time isochrones for any mode of transport, including public transport, cycling and walking.

In this guide, you'll learn the different ways you can create isochrone maps and how you can use isochrones in your business.

What is an isochrone map?

An isochrone map shows all the areas you can travel to from a starting point within a specific timeframe. For this reason, isochrone maps are often also referred to as travel time maps.

Isochrones answer the question, "Where can I get to in X minutes?". This is vital not only when determining where to locate a new facility or office, but also when showing website visitors points of interest within their desired journey time.

How to make a travel time map with the TravelTime isochrone map generator?

Let’s run through how you can use our free isochrone map generator to create your own travel time maps.

In this example, we create two isochrones from different origins in London.

Step 1: Enter your start location, preferred travel time and transport mode

Choose your starting location or ‘origin’. This could be an address or postcode or simply an area, for example, Highbury.

Choose your preferred mode of transport and the maximum time you are willing to travel.

Step 2: Get your isochrone

The isochrone map generator calculates every route within the travel time you've set. It then generates the isochrone map.

It shows a shaded area of accessibility around your origin, using your transit preference.

Step 3: Add another isochrone

To build another isochrone, you can ‘Add origin’ and follow the same process. This lets you compare two different starting locations and see where is accessible from both.

Step 4: Show the overlap

To find the areas that overlap, toggle ‘Intersect only’ on. This then shows the areas that are accessible from both of your starting locations in the time limit you’ve set, via your chosen transit mode.

Step 5: Search for points of interest within the isochrone map

In the right-hand panel of the map, you can now see the POIs that are accessible in your intersected area. For example, you can find all of the cafes, gyms, or schools in this area.

Step 6: Find the route

Click on a POI listing to see the route you would take. It shows any walking, the number of transit stops, or the turn-by-turn route.

Step 7: Change the start location of the isochrone

Have a play around with the starting location. How does it change if you start your journey from elsewhere, or if you change how long you want to travel for?

Step 8: Change the resolution

If you’re using H3, change the resolution to see smaller or larger cells. A higher resolution brings the cell size down, so you have more local-scale, precise journey time calculations.

How can I create more complex isochrone maps?

While our isochrone map generator is a great way to get started with creating your own isochrone maps, you may be looking to visualise a much greater number of isochrones for location analysis or to integrate isochrones into your web application.

Imagine showing reachable areas to users looking for a new property, analysing a new development site, finding a new retail site, or calculating routes at scale for your delivery fleet.

With the TravelTime Isochrone API or our geospatial plugins for QGIS, ArcGIS and Alteryx, you can create thousands of travel time isochrones for any transport mode – single or in bulk.

How do you make a public transport isochrone map?

Public transport is the hardest mode to model and the one most tools skip.

Mapbox's isochrone service doesn't offer public transit.

Google’s Isochrone API doesn’t offer public transit.

HERE’s polygon product doesn’t offer public transit.

TomTom isochrones product doesn’t offer public transit.

TravelTime Isochrone API offers accurate public transit models across the globe.

It’s available to try in our free time map tool: to create one, set your transport mode to public transport and choose a departure or arrival time. Time of day matters more here than for any other mode — a 30-minute journey at 8am and the same journey at 11pm run against different timetables and produce different shapes.

A public transport isochrone looks different from a driving one in three ways:

• Islands — disconnected shapes around stations and stops, because you can only board and alight at fixed points
• Holes — pockets inside the shape that aren't reachable in the time limit even though the area around them is
• Detailed boundaries — boundaries that follow walking distance from the last reachable stop, not a smooth radius

TravelTime models this on real routes and timetables and includes the time it takes to enter a station or change platforms.

Make a public transport isochrone for free.

How can you build a Google Maps isochrone?

Google Maps Platform now offers an Isochrones API, so if you're comparing providers, we've put the two side by side on transport modes, response times, shape detail and batch limits: Google Isochrones API vs TravelTime.

There are many differences but the biggest are:

• Google does not offer public transit isochrones, while TravelTime does
• Google limits isochrone size to 1 hour, TravelTime goes up to 4 hours
• Google’s response time is longer than TravelTime

For the free generator, there's nothing to compare. Google doesn't have a free generator with public transit, multiple origins, H3, or POIs.

TravelTime also works with any map tiles provider, including Leaflet and OpenStreetMap, so you're not tied to a single basemap.

How can isochrones help make smarter location decisions?

Isochrones are used across industries to make smarter location decisions, including online marketplaces, location analysis, and building routing or scheduling engines.

Below are just a few examples of how isochrones can help us make better decisions when it comes to locations.

Show reachable points of interest

One way to use isochrones is to show users the points of interest they can get to within their desired journey time.

For example, you could show all museums within 30 minutes of a hotel location. Or all of the restaurants, GPs, and supermarkets within a 15-minute walk of a potential property development site.

Leading UK property site, Zoopla, uses TravelTime Isochrones to show all the available properties that fall within a user's maximum travel time to a key location such as a workplace or good school.

Analyse accessibility to specific locations

The Financial Times used TravelTime Isochrones to analyse how accessible Covid vaccination sites were across England by different modes of transport.

With the TravelTime API, the team calculated multiple isochrones for each of England’s 1,220 vaccination centres. This would determine how far away someone could be from each vaccine centre and still reach it within a given travel time and by a given mode of transport.

Create customer accessibility catchment areas

IKEA used drive time polygons to visualise how easily potential customers could reach its store locations within 20 minutes by driving.

The resulting drive-time isochrone map takes into account factors such as traffic and one-way street and helped the IKEA marketing team customise its marketing campaigns according to the location.

Get deeper demographic insights

Isochrone maps can be layered with other datasets, such as population data, to get more insights.

SEGRO, one of Europe’s leading owners and managers of industry property, uses travel time isochrones alongside different datasets to analyse and fully understand how different demographics can access a location.

As SEGRO Data Scientist, Tim Hirst, explains: “It’s been great to analyse the data we get from TravelTime alongside other datasets like census or population data, to tell us how many people we can reach from certain locations.”

Run location analysis for urban planning

When it comes to urban planning, journey time isochrones can help you understand accessibility to important services and develop solutions to improve urban infrastructure.

Hatch, a global consultancy, used travel time catchment areas to understand the economic and social impact of a planned London Underground station extension on the surrounding areas.

To determine the impact, the team created a study area around each station, based on a 12-minute walking time catchment area.

Identify areas to improve essential services

By combining travel time isochrones with population data, you can also identify the areas that require essential services, such as healthcare.

For example, the UK's National Health Service uses isochrones via the TravelTime API to analyse population and health data. This analysis helps them to improve sustainability and the quality of care they offer.

Find the best office location

Isochrones are incredibly useful for analysing the accessibility of a location. Businesses looking to relocate offices can use catchment areas to determine whether a new office location falls within a good commute time for employees.

You can use this analysis to identify the best office location.

Discover more inspiration here.

Which countries can I create isochrone maps for?

TravelTime has global coverage for 100+ countries and territories. So you can create isochrones and visualise all reachable locations for different transport modes globally.

You can see our full list of supported countries here.

How does TravelTime calculate travel times?

A question we often get asked is how the TravelTime API calculates accurate travel times. Our transport models are proprietary and use a mixture of transport timetables and speed profiles.

• Walking: We calculate walk times using an average walk speed. It allows for delays on routes including traffic lights, roundabouts, and crossings.
• Public transport: We calculate public transport using real routes and timetables. It allows for the time it takes to enter the station or switch platforms.
• Driving: We calculate drive times by applying specific driving speeds to individual roads, and model how these change over a typical day across different departure and arrival times, peak and off-peak. It allows time for parking the car, using roundabouts and traffic lights.
• Cycling: We calculate cycling times using average cycling speeds. It allows time for crossings and favours quieter roads or cycle paths.
• Driving & train: we calculate driving and train travel times by measuring the time it takes to travel from door to door.

Create thousands of isochrones with the TravelTime API & plugins

Isochrones, also known as travel time maps, are a useful way to visualise where’s reachable within a time limit.

They can also help to make better decisions when it comes to locations, whether it’s helping your website visitors visualise the best areas to buy a property or performing location analysis to determine the best location for a new site.

Our free isochrone map generator lets you create free isochrones to see where you can reach within a given time.

But you can create much more complex isochrones with the TravelTime API, creating thousands of isochrones for any mode of transport.

To learn more about creating isochrones with TravelTime, chat to us or sign up for a free API key.

Isochrone map API developer resources

Discover our isochrone resources for developers here:

• Isochrone documentation
• Isochrone playground
• Isochrone API tutorial
• Developer isochrone use cases
• Leaflet Isochrone tutorial
• Isochrone getting started guide
• TravelTime isochrone endpoints
• Create an isochrone animation tutorial
• Create a GeoJson isochrone