Drive Time Map

See how far you can drive, bike, or walk from any address. Pick one or more time intervals and the map shows the reachable area based on real roads — not a straight-line circle.

Definition

What is a drive time map?

A drive time map (isochrone map) shows every location you can reach from a starting point within a given travel time. Unlike a radius circle, it follows actual roads, respects speed limits, and reflects real-world geography — rivers, mountains, and dead-ends.

How it works

How is the area calculated?

The Valhalla routing engine expands outward from your starting point along every road in OpenStreetMap. When the cumulative travel time exceeds your threshold, it draws a polygon around all reachable endpoints. The result reflects speed limits, road classification, and turn costs.

Coverage

Where does this work?

Worldwide. The tool uses global OpenStreetMap road data, so it works in any country. Results are most accurate in areas where OSM has dense road-network coverage — the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Australia.

Cost

Is this tool free?

Yes — completely free, no sign-up, no API key. The routing runs on a public Valhalla demo server maintained by FOSSGIS e.V. The map and geocoder are also open-source and free.

Search for an address, use GPS, or click the map to set your starting point.

How to use the drive time map

Set your starting point

Type an address, city, or landmark into the search box. You can also click "Detect My Location" to use GPS, or click anywhere on the map to drop a pin. The green marker shows your origin.

Choose travel times and mode

Toggle one or more time intervals: 10, 15, 20, 30, 45, 60, 90, or 120 minutes. Switch between Drive, Bike, and Walk modes — each uses realistic speeds for that travel type. You can show multiple time bands at once to compare coverage.

Read and use the results

Colored polygons appear on the map — darker shades for shorter times, lighter for longer. Below the map, cards show the reachable area in square miles and square kilometers. The summary explains how the area grows as you increase drive time.

What is a drive time map (isochrone)?

A drive time map — technically an isochrone map — answers one of the most practical geographic questions: "What can I reach from here within X minutes?" The word comes from Greek: "iso" (equal) + "chronos" (time).

Unlike a simple radius circle that assumes straight-line travel at a uniform speed, an isochrone follows actual roads, respects posted speed limits, models turn penalties, and accounts for real geography — rivers, mountains, one-way streets, highway interchanges, and dead-end neighborhoods.

The result is an organic polygon that stretches along highways (where you cover ground quickly) and pinches near barriers with no crossing. A 30-minute isochrone from downtown Chicago, for example, extends 20+ miles south along I-57 but stops cold at Lake Michigan to the east.

This makes isochrone maps far more useful than radius circles for any decision that depends on real travel — commuting, deliveries, site selection, emergency response, and catchment analysis.

EXAMPLE

30-minute drive from Chicago: Starting downtown (the Loop), the 30-minute isochrone covers ~250 sq mi — but only west and south. Lake Michigan blocks the entire east side. The longest finger follows I-55 southwest toward Joliet. The shortest reach is the dense north-side residential grid where traffic crawls.

Drive time examples for major US cities

The table below shows approximate reachable areas (in square miles) from the center of major US cities at 15, 30, and 60 minutes of free-flow driving. Areas vary significantly based on road density, terrain, and geographic barriers.

City	15 min	30 min	60 min	Notes
New York, NY	~18 sq mi	~85 sq mi	~550 sq mi	Dense grid — extends quickly along I-95 and NJ Turnpike corridors
Los Angeles, CA	~30 sq mi	~200 sq mi	~1,100 sq mi	Highway-dependent — I-5 and I-10 create long fingers
Chicago, IL	~35 sq mi	~250 sq mi	~1,400 sq mi	Lake Michigan blocks east — isochrone is a semicircle
Houston, TX	~50 sq mi	~400 sq mi	~2,200 sq mi	Sprawling freeway network, fast suburban expansion
Denver, CO	~45 sq mi	~350 sq mi	~1,800 sq mi	Mountains block west — I-25 corridor dominates north-south
Miami, FL	~25 sq mi	~150 sq mi	~800 sq mi	Ocean on the east, Everglades on the west compress the isochrone
Dallas, TX	~50 sq mi	~420 sq mi	~2,400 sq mi	Flat terrain + highway mesh = large, symmetric coverage
Seattle, WA	~22 sq mi	~120 sq mi	~650 sq mi	Puget Sound and I-5 bottleneck shape the polygon
Atlanta, GA	~40 sq mi	~300 sq mi	~1,600 sq mi	I-285 perimeter loop visible in the 30-min contour
Phoenix, AZ	~55 sq mi	~450 sq mi	~2,500 sq mi	Desert grid, very little terrain resistance

Areas are approximate and based on free-flow conditions. Actual drive times vary with traffic, construction, and weather.

What people use drive time maps for

Commute and housing search

Set your office as the center and choose 30 or 45 minutes. The polygon instantly shows every neighborhood you could commute from. Compare morning rush hour (use a shorter time for conservatism) vs. off-peak. A house near a highway interchange may be faster to reach than one that's technically closer but on winding residential streets — the isochrone reveals this.

EXAMPLE

Commute from Midtown Manhattan: From Grand Central Terminal, the 30-minute drive reaches Hoboken, Jersey City, parts of Brooklyn, and the south Bronx. At 45 minutes, the polygon extends to Westchester, parts of Long Island, and central NJ. The NJ Turnpike corridor is notably faster than equivalent distance on local Brooklyn streets.

Delivery and service area planning

Restaurants, florists, pharmacies, and courier services use drive time maps to define delivery zones. Set your store as the center, select 20 or 30 minutes, and the polygon shows the realistic boundary of your service area. Layer multiple times to create tiered pricing: free delivery within 15 minutes, a fee for 15-30, and no service beyond 30.

Retail and franchise site selection

When evaluating a new store location, overlay 15- and 30-minute isochrones to estimate how many customers can reach you. Compare two candidate sites side by side. The one with a larger reachable population within 20 minutes is usually the better bet — and the isochrone tells you things a simple radius misses, like a river that cuts off half the circle.

Emergency and evacuation planning

Fire stations, ambulance bases, and hospitals use isochrone analysis to evaluate response coverage. A station that "covers" a 10-mile radius on paper may actually take 15 minutes through congested neighborhoods. The isochrone shows the real 8-minute response boundary — and where the gaps are.

Tourism and day trip planning

Staying somewhere for the weekend? Set your hotel as the center and select 60 or 90 minutes. The map shows every attraction, park, winery, and town you could visit as a day trip without spending the whole day in the car. Especially useful in areas with uneven road networks — mountains, islands, or rural regions where distances can be deceiving.

Bike and walk accessibility analysis

Urban planners and transit advocates use walk and bike isochrones to evaluate how much of a city is accessible without a car. A 15-minute walk isochrone around a subway station is its true "catchment area" — the zone where people are likely to walk to the station. Compare bike vs. walk to show how much more accessible a neighborhood becomes with cycling infrastructure.

School and childcare search

Parents set home as the center and choose 15-20 minutes to find schools, daycares, and after-school programs within a manageable commute. The isochrone accounts for the actual morning drop-off route — important when a school that's "5 miles away" is actually 25 minutes through school-zone traffic.

Radius circle vs. drive time isochrone

Many people start with a radius circle and wonder why it doesn't match their real-world experience. Here's why an isochrone is almost always more useful for travel-based decisions:

	Radius circle	Drive time isochrone
Method	Straight-line distance ("as the crow flies")	Real road-network travel time
Shape	Perfect circle	Organic polygon following roads, terrain, and barriers
Speed limits	Not considered	Respected per road type (highway / residential / path)
Terrain	Ignored — draws through rivers, mountains, lakes	Rivers, mountains, dead-end streets all reflected
One-way streets	Ignored	Fully modeled
Best for	Signal range, rough distance, "within 50 miles"	Commutes, deliveries, real travel planning
Accuracy	Low for real travel	High — based on millions of OSM road segments
Speed	Instant (math only)	1-3 seconds (routing engine computation)

Need a simple radius instead? Use our Map Radius Tool. Need to find ZIP codes or cities within a radius? See Find ZIP Codes in Radius and Find Cities in Radius.

How this tool compares to alternatives

Tool	Free?	Modes	Limits	Signup
SimpleMapLab (this tool)	Yes	Drive / Bike / Walk	Up to 120 min	No
Google Maps	Yes	Drive only (directions)	No isochrone feature	Google acct
TravelTime	2-week trial	Drive / Transit / Walk	Paid after trial	Yes
Mapbox Isochrone API	Free tier	Drive / Walk / Cycle	100K req/mo free	API key
OpenRouteService	Yes	Drive / Bike / Walk	500/day	API key
Esri ArcGIS / Network Analyst	No	All + transit	Unlimited	Paid license

How the drive time is calculated

Under the hood, this tool calls the Valhalla open-source routing engine, which builds a routable graph from OpenStreetMap data. When you set a starting point and time budget, Valhalla performs a modified Dijkstra expansion:

Start at the nearest road node to your pin. If you click a building or open field, the engine snaps to the closest drivable road.
Expand outward along every connected road segment. Each segment has a cost (travel time) based on road type, speed limit, and length. Turns add a small penalty (left turns across traffic cost more than right turns).
Accumulate travel time. When the cumulative time exceeds the selected threshold (e.g., 30 minutes), that branch of the expansion stops.
Draw the polygon. All reachable road endpoints are connected into a polygon. A denoise + generalize pass smooths the boundary into a clean shape.

Multiple time thresholds (e.g., 15, 30, 60 minutes) are computed in a single expansion pass — the engine records all thresholds simultaneously, so requesting 3 contours is barely slower than requesting 1.

Speed assumptions by road type

Road type	Typical speed (drive)	Typical speed (bike)	Typical speed (walk)
Interstate / motorway	55-70 mph	N/A (excluded)	N/A (excluded)
Highway / trunk road	45-65 mph	15-20 mph	N/A
Arterial / primary	30-45 mph	12-16 mph	3 mph
Residential	20-30 mph	10-14 mph	3 mph
Service / alley	10-15 mph	8-10 mph	3 mph
Path / sidewalk	N/A	8-12 mph	3 mph

Actual speeds used by Valhalla depend on the specific OSM tags assigned to each road segment. The table above shows general ranges. Real-time traffic is not factored in.

Related tools and resources

If you need straight-line distance instead of drive time, use the Distance Between Two Places calculator. To draw a simple radius circle on the map, try the Map Radius Tool. To find all ZIP codes or cities within a radius, see Find ZIP Codes in Radius and Find Cities in Radius.

For population estimates within a given area, use the Population Within Radius tool. To calculate the area of a custom shape drawn on the map, see the Map Area Calculator.

To look up your current county, city, or ZIP code, try What County Am I In?, What City Am I In?, or What Zip Code Am I In?. For elevation at any point, see the Elevation Finder.

Glossary

Isochrone: A line or polygon connecting all points reachable from a given location within a fixed travel time. Greek: "iso" (equal) + "chronos" (time).
Isodistance: Similar to isochrone but defined by distance rather than time. A radius circle is a simple isodistance line.
Valhalla: An open-source routing engine maintained by the Linux Foundation's Overture Maps initiative. It computes routes, isochrones, and matrix queries against OpenStreetMap data.
OpenStreetMap (OSM): A collaborative, community-maintained map of the world. OSM provides the road network data that powers this tool's routing calculations.
Costing model: The set of rules Valhalla uses to estimate travel time — speed limits, road classification, turn penalties, and mode-specific factors (e.g., cycling prefers bike lanes).
Denoise: A smoothing parameter that removes small concavities from the isochrone polygon, producing a cleaner shape without significantly affecting accuracy.
Catchment area: The geographic region from which a facility (hospital, school, store) draws its users. A 15-minute drive-time isochrone around a hospital is its primary catchment area.
Service area analysis: A planning technique that maps how far a service can reach within a time or distance constraint. Used by fire departments, ambulance services, delivery companies, and retail site selectors.
Graph expansion: The core algorithm behind isochrone generation. The routing engine starts at the origin node and "expands" outward along connected road segments, tracking cumulative cost (time) until the budget is exhausted.
Turn penalty: The extra seconds added for making a turn at an intersection — a left turn across traffic costs more time than a right turn or a straight-ahead continuation.

Data sources & methodology
Road network: OpenStreetMap (ODbL). Routing: Valhalla (MIT), hosted by FOSSGIS e.V. Map tiles: OpenFreeMap. Geocoding: Photon. Area calculation: shoelace formula with cos(lat) correction. Does not model real-time traffic, construction, or weather.

Frequently asked questions

It depends entirely on your starting location. In a rural area with highways, you can typically cover 25-30 miles in 30 minutes. In a dense urban core during rush hour, you might only reach 5-10 miles. On a highway in the western US, 30 minutes can cover 35+ miles. This tool calculates the actual reachable area based on real road networks, not straight-line distance.

On average, a 60-minute drive from a suburban starting point covers 40-55 miles and 800-2,000 square miles, depending on the road network. Cities with extensive highway systems (Houston, Dallas, Phoenix) produce larger areas than cities constrained by geography (San Francisco, Seattle, Miami).

An isochrone map shows all the places you can reach from a given point within a specific travel time. The word comes from Greek: "iso" (equal) and "chronos" (time). Instead of a circle (which assumes you can travel in a straight line), an isochrone follows actual roads, paths, and highways to show realistic reachable areas.

The tool uses the Valhalla routing engine with OpenStreetMap road data. It factors in speed limits, road types (highway vs residential), turn costs, and one-way streets. It does not account for real-time traffic, construction, or weather. Think of it as the best-case drive time under normal conditions.

No. The isochrone is calculated using posted speed limits and road types, not real-time traffic data. During rush hour, your actual reachable area will be smaller than what the map shows. For a conservative estimate, select a shorter time interval (e.g., use 20 minutes if you expect 30 minutes with traffic).

Yes. Switch between Drive, Bike, and Walk modes using the toggle above the map. Bike mode uses cycling speed (~12 mph / 20 km/h) and prefers bike-friendly roads. Walk mode uses walking speed (~3 mph / 5 km/h) and includes pedestrian paths, sidewalks, and crosswalks.

You can calculate up to 120 minutes (2 hours) in any direction. For longer trips, use our distance calculator or a route planner — isochrones become very large and less useful at 3+ hour ranges.

Set your workplace as the center point and select 30 or 45 minutes. The polygon shows every neighborhood you could commute from within that time. A house 15 miles away on a highway may be faster than one 8 miles away on residential streets — the isochrone makes this visible.

Yes. Set your warehouse or store as the center, choose your target delivery time (e.g., 30 minutes), and the polygon shows your realistic delivery area. The area calculation in square miles helps estimate market coverage. Compare multiple time bands to set tiered delivery fees.

A radius circle assumes you can travel in a straight line in every direction at the same speed. An isochrone follows actual roads. Near a highway, the isochrone stretches far along the highway corridor. Near a river with no bridge, it stops. The isochrone always shows a smaller, more realistic area than a radius circle.

Yes. It uses global OpenStreetMap data, so it works for any location in the world. Road coverage varies by region; well-mapped areas (US, EU, Japan, Australia) produce more accurate results than remote or developing regions.

The area is the total land area inside the isochrone polygon. For context: Manhattan is ~23 sq mi, the city of Los Angeles is ~469 sq mi, and Rhode Island is ~1,214 sq mi. These reference points help you visualize the scale of the coverage area.

Yes. Toggle as many buttons as you like — 10, 15, 20, 30, 45, 60, 90, or 120 minutes. Each appears as a shaded band on the map, darker for shorter times and lighter for longer. The layered view makes it easy to see how coverage expands with each additional time increment.

The shape reflects the road network. Highways create long "fingers" because you cover ground fast. Rivers, mountains, or neighborhoods with few through-streets create indentations. Zoom in and you will usually see the geographic feature that causes it.

Yes — completely free, no sign-up, no API key, no usage limit for normal use. The routing engine, map tiles, and geocoder are all open-source and free. The tool runs in your browser.

The Valhalla routing engine builds a graph from OpenStreetMap roads. From the origin, it performs a Dijkstra-like expansion along every road segment, tracking accumulated travel time based on speed limits, road functional class, and turn penalties. When the time budget is exhausted everywhere, it draws a polygon around all reachable endpoints and applies smoothing.

Drive time measures how long it takes to reach a place. Drive distance measures how far the route is in miles or kilometers. A 30-minute drive on a highway might be 25 miles, while a 30-minute drive in city traffic might be only 8 miles. Time-based analysis is usually more useful for real-world decisions like commutes and deliveries.

Not yet via URL — the fastest option today is a screenshot. We plan to add shareable links and export (GeoJSON, KML) in a future update.

In very congested urban cores, a bicycle traveling at a steady 12 mph through bike lanes and shortcuts can cover more ground than a car stuck in stop-and-go traffic. The isochrone uses free-flow speed limits for cars though, so in reality this only happens during heavy congestion — which this tool does not model.

The underlying Valhalla API returns standard GeoJSON, which is compatible with QGIS, ArcGIS, Mapbox, D3, and virtually every GIS tool. You can call the Valhalla endpoint directly for programmatic use — this tool is a visual wrapper around it.