21–30 of 97 posts
https://www.forrestthewoods.com/blog/visualizing_commute_tim...
AFAICT the only reliable source of commute and transit times is Google Maps. To be useful it requires real traffic data. Unfortunately Google jacked up the prices way too high to be useful.
My dream is a service for building isochrone maps with full support for walking/biking/transit/driving.
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.
This will make their requests for more money/raises/etc seem absolutely insane when you compare what these countries/cities/agencies do WRT to transporting millions of people efficiently every single day - and not to mention just how clean such systems are.
When you go through stations in HK - you see well-uniformed cleaning folks all over the place.
Nice! Once upon a time I did something very similar. https://www.forrestthewoods.com/blog/visualizing_commute_tim... AFAICT the only reliable source of commute and transit times is Google Maps. To be useful it requires real traffic data. Unfortunately Google jacked up the prices way too high to be useful. My dream is a service for building isochrone maps with full support for walking/biking/transit/driving.
https://app.traveltime.com/search/0-lat=43.64399&0-lng=-79.3...
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.
In general, population density in East Asia is far higher than in the US.
Public service announcement - these kind of maps are known as isochrone maps and they're anything but new, but are (IMHO criminally) unpopular. They're extremely helpful when house hunting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map
Tried some EU countries but did not work. What country is supported?
Yep the only cities that are supported are on the list at the top: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, New York, and Paris. Adding support for other cities is a pain in the butt to find the corresponding GTFS, upload the vector tiles to postgis, etc.
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.
Population density makes a huge difference. The more people live in a city, the more funds the government has to invest to get a better transportation system. In general, population density in East Asia is far higher than in the US.
Europe is not immune either, they would've followed the US's footsteps entirely if it weren't for the 1973 oil shock, which hit them harder than the US.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Population density makes a huge difference. The more people live in a city, the more funds the government has to invest to get a better transportation system. In general, population density in East Asia is far higher than in the US.
This is a chicken and egg problem, stop making excuses for Western governments. Nearly all US cities had streetcars and dense walkable downtowns. There are pictures of this. They were destroyed in the 1950s due to pressure from car/oil lobbies, as well as eager house buyers who wanted cheap FHA loans. (Only available to whites) Europe is not immune either, they would've followed the US's footsteps entirely if it were…
Popular explanation but largely false. They were destroyed because people quit using them.
I do think there are a number of things you could do to improve the UX here. Hope this doesn't come across as too harsh, but here are some suggestions...
1. Double-click to set origin makes sense, but hover to set a destination is a bit weird, for two reasons: a. There's no way to "lock" a destination by clicking, so I can't pick a route I want to see and fix my view on it. The UI feels jittery as a result. b. In some cases (I'm looking at NYC), loading the route to the hovered destination hangs for several seconds. I don't know if this is just an issue because your server is overloaded, but it's a weird state to be in.
I'd consider: 1) adding a loading state when the route to the destination is being computed, 2) enable clicking a point to lock viewing that route, 3) maybe disabling the hover interaction entirely, though if it were performant, it would be pretty nice to have.
2. The "arrival time" concept is a slightly odd. I'd prefer to just see the amount of time it'll take to get to a destination, rather than an arrival time based on a particular starting time. I don't think anyone's going to use this to plan a specific route at a specific time; instead, they'll use it to explore locations of interest, and explore how long it'll take to get to various destinations. I see you show the trip duration in the bottom-left, but having it be an arrow pointing to a gradient spectrum is much harder to parse than just saying "27 minutes".
3. The fade effect on the side panel is a bit weird. It does draw more attention to the map, but the side panel is still occluding my view, and having it faded just makes the text very hard to read. I'd consider making it un-faded, but adding some way to collapse it.