For Europe by train see http://emptypipes.org/supp/isochrone_london/
Time travel: An isochronic map of travel times from London circa 1914
21–30 of 47 posts
Re: Time travel: An isochronic map of travel times from London circa 1914
#22The smallest unit listed - within 5 days journey - gives an interesting perspective on the world of travel at that time. What would we choose nowadays for an equivalent unit of "not worth listing anything below this?" Within an hour?
Within 5 hours would get you most of Europe.
Re: Time travel: An isochronic map of travel times from London circa 1914
#23I've always liked these maps that capture the ground truth for a single point in time. Here's another one I found a while back showing "Everywhere you can go in an Airplane", circa 1918, also with journey times:
http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?CommentID=8226
(I actually pilfered it for that post from another source, but can't find the original now).
Growing up, we had a World Atlas in the house that was printed in the early 1940s. It had a little leaflet in the back with a card you could send in for an updated set of maps after the war was over.
Re: Time travel: An isochronic map of travel times from London circa 1914
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
My rough guess is that, if the units were hours, and if concorde still flew, then the map would look much the same?
I suspect a modern version would have more discontinuities. Areas near airports would be fast to reach, but onward travel from the airports wouldn't be so much faster than 100 years ago. And the oceans would look different - it still takes a long time to reach the mid-atlantic!
Apparently trains are slower now than the used to be, I seem to remember reading something about this being the case even further back too - which isn't really surprising given how many local lines were closed.
Re: Time travel: An isochronic map of travel times from London circa 1914
#25The smallest unit listed - within 5 days journey - gives an interesting perspective on the world of travel at that time. What would we choose nowadays for an equivalent unit of "not worth listing anything below this?" Within an hour?
Within 5 hours would get you most of Europe.
I would put that at 8 hours. Unless Spain is especially badly connected, you are quickly at least 2 hours away from the airport. So that would be at least 4 hours slow transit + flight time.
Of course, by population density, you are probably 5 hours away from most people in Europe.
Re: Time travel: An isochronic map of travel times from London circa 1914
#26I think it's interesting that 100 years later, you could replace "days" with "hours" and the mail would look (roughly) the same.
I wonder what the next 100 years will bring...
Re: Time travel: An isochronic map of travel times from London circa 1914
#27The smallest unit listed - within 5 days journey - gives an interesting perspective on the world of travel at that time. What would we choose nowadays for an equivalent unit of "not worth listing anything below this?" Within an hour?
Within 5 hours would get you most of Europe.
Only to major hubs, the "last (100) mile(s)" still will cost you a lot of time.
Re: Time travel: An isochronic map of travel times from London circa 1914
#28Ooh, I've been investigating this lately, and I can't sleep. Here are some entries from my bookmarks: * BART map, one minute per hexagon - http://transitmaps.tumblr.com/post/133579339455/lopato-bart-... * Mapnificent, covering dozens of cities - http://www.mapnificent.net/ * OneBayArea, including housing prices - http://maps.planbayarea.org/travel_housing/
More links for you:
* Europe - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/06/05...
* A distorted map from Japan - http://chaudron.blogspot.jp/2009/04/kohei-sugiura-snakagaki-...
Re: Time travel: An isochronic map of travel times from London circa 1914
#29An important dimension missing in this type of map is cost of travel. If you are willing to spend sufficient money, my guess would be you could reach pretty much any spot of land on earth within about 48 hours, with the appropriate combination of helicopter and private jet... But if you limit yourself to, say, 2000 Euros, you could probably make it to many places, but it would take significantly longer.
More relevant nowadays, due to the ubiquitous nature of transportation, I suspect would be seeing a map that charts not time necessary to reach a location (after all 72-96 hours would cover the overwhelming majority of the globe) from a given starting point but rather the nominal cost associated with doing so.
Re: Time travel: An isochronic map of travel times from London circa 1914
#30I wish the guys from
http://www.rome2rio.com
see this and make a more precise modern version