How to Add the Northern Line Extension to Your TravelTime Analysis

What’s new?

Taking into account future transport developments is often vital when running spatial analysis. New public transport infrastructure can make previously unreachable areas suddenly more accessible, and with this comes more opportunities and more potential value in these areas.

When tackling questions like where to open a new retail store, or where to relocate an office to, or how to value a real estate asset, ‘future proofing’ decisions as much as possible is crucial.

TravelTime already supports the ability to add Crossrail into the UK’s public transport network, but we have now also made the Northern Line Extension available for clients.

What did we do?

As with the Crossrail extension that we have previously modelled, we took the current UK public transport network and added in the planned extension of the Northern line underground line between Kennington and Battersea.

Once tested, we deployed this future network onto a new server so that the suite of TravelTime tools can run on top of it.

What does this look like in practice?

The impact of this new addition to the transport network can be seen when using any of the key TravelTime tools:

Isochrones

Analysis run using the TravelTime add-in for ArcGIS Pro

This analysis shows the reachable areas within 20 minutes by public transport from Kennington Station. The green shape shows the area reachable on the standard network, while the red shape shows the reachable area using the Northern Line extension.

Routes

Analysis run using the TravelTime plugin for QGIS

Calculating the fastest public transport route between London Bridge and Battersea Power Station visually shows the difference with and without the Northern Line Extension.

The turn-by-turn directions for the route using the Northern Line Extension also demonstrate the new line being used.

Origin-Destination Matrix

Standard network travel times (s):

Northern Line Extension network travel times (s):

Analysis run using the TravelTime Matrix macro for Alteryx

These two matrices show the travel times in seconds between multiple origins and destinations. When comparing the two, it’s clear to see that journey times are reduced as a result of the new Northern Line Extension.

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To start using TravelTime for your analysis, sign up for a free trial API key here.

If there are other future transport networks that you are interested in having modelled, please contact us at sales@traveltime.com.