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Show HN: I built a transit travel time map

map.henryn.xyz

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Re: Show HN: I built a transit travel time map

#11

Post by ComputerGuru »

ng-henry wrote: post #9
ComputerGuru wrote: post #5

It’s only the five cities listed at the top, right? (I initially thought they were just bookmarks/shortcuts to some good demos then I realized they influenced the traffic sources checkbox at the bottom so they had to determine what the map showed rather than merely index it.)

Yes that's right. I do plan on adding other cities in the future, but these are the ones I've chosen because I've lived in them or I think they have a cool transit story.

Cool - and I can’t argue with the rationale! Here’s a vote for Chicago: it’s considered to have one of the best public transportation systems in the USA and it’s rather different from the east coast models. Might be fun!

Re: Show HN: I built a transit travel time map

#12

Post by jwestbury »

o10449366 wrote: post #10

This is a great idea. I can only speak to NYC, but the data sources don't give good recommendations. Optimal routing for time in NYC is tricky though and relying on only mapping services and not a combination of walking, biking, buses, and subways leads to longer travel times than necessary. For example, there are many parts of Brooklyn where no transit lines are directly connected and you have to go into Manhattan f…

Have you used CityMapper? I haven't used it in NYC, but I use in in London, and it's solved this problem much better than Google/Apple Maps.

Edit: Though, CityMapper doesn't actually provide a travel time map, alas.

Re: Show HN: I built a transit travel time map

#14

Post by bkor »

The following site works for The Netherlands (not just Amsterdam): https://mapitout.iamsterdam.com/

It has some minor limitations to select the time (has to one of the predefined options). That can be worked around by changing the URL parameter.

It can also map out multiple locations and see the overlap.

It's fairly useful to see where you want to live while taking e.g. the office location into account. It gave me more options than I thought I had, partly because I didn't think about small towns with a train station.

Re: Show HN: I built a transit travel time map

#17

Post by ng-henry »

bkor wrote: post #14

The following site works for The Netherlands (not just Amsterdam): https://mapitout.iamsterdam.com/ It has some minor limitations to select the time (has to one of the predefined options). That can be worked around by changing the URL parameter. It can also map out multiple locations and see the overlap. It's fairly useful to see where you want to live while taking e.g. the office location into account. It gave me mo…

Wow, this website is very pretty. It's similar to what I envisioned when I built this project, but I wanted to make a heatmap (of all possible times) rather than just an isochrone. The little "islands" of fast transit access is also what I wanted to show with my project too! It's cool to discover the little spots near train stations that are cheaper but offer an equivalent commute to the city center.

There's also https://www.chronotrains.com which was another inspiration when building this project too.

Re: Show HN: I built a transit travel time map

#18

Post by ng-henry »

o10449366 wrote: post #10

This is a great idea. I can only speak to NYC, but the data sources don't give good recommendations. Optimal routing for time in NYC is tricky though and relying on only mapping services and not a combination of walking, biking, buses, and subways leads to longer travel times than necessary. For example, there are many parts of Brooklyn where no transit lines are directly connected and you have to go into Manhattan f…

Experienced this problem too in Toronto, when Google Maps wouldn't give transit + bike directions (which are often much faster than transit + walk). As you know the city more though these things become intuitive and Google Maps becomes less useful.

I started using Transit App more often for the mixed-modes routing. It even supports bike shares/scooters, so sometimes it suggests new routes based on scooter -> subway -> scooter which is much faster than bus -> subway -> bus.

Re: Show HN: I built a transit travel time map

#19

Post by guessmyname »

I get sad every time I return back to America from Asia because of how small the public infrastructure is in many parts of America compared to Asia.

If anyone has lived or at least visited places like Tokyo, Japan or Shanghai, China, you probably understand what I am referring to.

Re: Show HN: I built a transit travel time map

#20

Post by ng-henry »

lovegrenoble wrote: post #15

Beautiful UI. Is there any practical use for it?

~~getting job interviews~~

haha just kidding...I'm unsure of whether this is useful at all to transit companies, but one goal of this project is to make transit cool and help people understand their cities better.

I originally built this to help me find housing in Toronto, so deciding where to live could be another good use of this tool :)

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