Drive Time Map
Reachable areas along real roads via Valhalla — Drive, Bike, Walk, multi time contours.
By Aryan Khan, Founder & Editor · Updated October 2026
A 30-minute travel area follows the available network. It can extend along faster roads and contract around barriers; it is not a fixed-radius circle or a guarantee of arrival time.
How to use Drive Time Map
Choose a starting point, travel mode and time budget. Inspect the returned shape alongside the roads: the routing model and network determine the result, not a universal miles-per-minute rule.
A Drive Time Map shows how far you can travel in a set number of minutes, following the road, path or cycle network instead of a straight line. Choose 10 to 120 minutes, add up to four bands, and compare driving, walking and cycling reach from one start point.
- 1Set start point.
- 2Choose mode and times.
- 3Generate reachable area.
What people use Drive Time Map for
1. Compare candidate shop locations
Draw the same time band from each candidate site using the same travel mode. Inspect which neighbourhoods are reachable before bringing in demographic data. A travel-area polygon alone does not count customers; the population-radius tool uses a different, circular boundary and should not be presented as the population of this polygon.
2. Build a realistic commute shortlist
Use a time band as an initial filter, then inspect a specific home-to-work journey with the Driving Distance Calculator. Direction, congestion and route restrictions can affect the actual journey. Do not treat an outbound area as proof of the same inbound commute.
3. Explore a service territory before making promises
Compare a time-based area with a radius map to see where simple distance rules differ from road access. Dispatch delays, parking and on-site work are not included in the mapped travel budget; operational commitments need separate evidence.
4. Compare walking and cycling access
Keep the origin and time budget constant when switching modes. Each mode follows the network available to the routing service, not every path visible on a basemap. Check local access restrictions before using a suggested area for a real journey.
Worked examples
In a hypothetical constant-speed model, 30 minutes at 30 mph gives 15 miles of travel. This arithmetic is not a universal ceiling for a real 30-minute area: a routing service may use higher or lower speeds on different roads. The modelled polygon must be read from the routing result, not inferred from this example.
Assuming a constant 3 mph pace, 15 minutes corresponds to 0.75 miles along a route. A crossing delay or an indirect path reduces how far you can get in practice. This is a simple distance-time illustration, not a measured walking catchment for a particular location.
Illustrative distance at assumed constant speeds
Arithmetic examples only: distance = speed × time. These figures are not limits or predictions for the routing engine. Actual network speeds vary.
| Time band | Driving illustration at 30 mph avg | Walking illustration at 3 mph | Often used for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 minutes | 5.0 mi (8.0 km) | 0.50 mi (0.8 km) | Immediate neighbourhood trips |
| 15 minutes | 7.5 mi (12.1 km) | 0.75 mi (1.2 km) | School and station catchments |
| 20 minutes | 10.0 mi (16.1 km) | 1.00 mi (1.6 km) | Local shopping and services |
| 30 minutes | 15.0 mi (24.1 km) | 1.50 mi (2.4 km) | Standard retail catchment, commuting |
| 45 minutes | 22.5 mi (36.2 km) | 2.25 mi (3.6 km) | Service response promises |
| 60 minutes | 30.0 mi (48.3 km) | 3.00 mi (4.8 km) | Regional day reach |
| 90 minutes | 45.0 mi (72.4 km) | 4.50 mi (7.2 km) | Day-trip planning |
| 120 minutes | 60.0 mi (96.6 km) | 6.00 mi (9.7 km) | Maximum single-leg planning |
Do not use this table to draw a drive-time boundary. Compare the returned routing area and verify real journeys when timing matters.
Drive-time areas model road accessibility, so they are usually more realistic than simple circles
A drive-time map creates an isochrone: an area estimated to be reachable from the chosen origin within a selected amount of travel time. The shape expands along faster roads and contracts where the network is indirect or crossings are limited. That makes it useful for store catchments, service territories, home searches, commute comparisons, field operations and facility planning where a 10-mile circle would treat every direction as equally accessible.
MapBench supports road-network travel rather than pretending radius and travel time are interchangeable. A river with one bridge, a mountain range, a limited-access motorway or a sparse rural network can produce a strongly asymmetric reachable area. Multiple time contours can also reveal how coverage grows from a short local trip into a broader regional catchment.
The result normally represents typical/free-flow routing rather than guaranteed live traffic conditions. Rush-hour congestion, incidents, weather and road restrictions can change what is reachable at a specific moment. Use the isochrone as a planning model and check a live navigation service when an exact departure-time journey matters.
How to interpret the result
The most common errors come from using a correct result to answer the wrong geographic question. Keep these points in mind for Drive Time Map:
- Add a congestion buffer to any free-flow travel time: 20–40% in peak urban areas is a sane rule of thumb, and the interface labels its times as free-flow for exactly this reason. For appointments, plan with the buffer; for physics, trust the raw number.
- Place route endpoints on roads, not rooftops. Routing engines snap points to the nearest drivable way, and a point in a river or a courtyard can snap somewhere surprising — nudging the pin to the nearest street makes results stable and explainable.
Limits & appropriate use
Routing's limits live in three places: data vintage, access reality and time modelling. The network is OpenStreetMap's current picture — new interchanges lag, private gates may be missing, seasonal ferries keep their own calendars. Access rules reflect mapped law, not today's roadworks. And durations are free-flow physics: speed limits and road classes without your city's sociology, so peak hours, weather and parking belong in your buffer, not in the engine's promise. The tools label all three limits on every result, because an unlabelled estimate is a trap.
What the stack does brilliantly is the reproducible core: the same stops, mode and engine give the same route to everyone, everywhere, which makes it a superb baseline for comparison, screening and planning. Escalation is domain-specific and well understood — professional dispatch adds live traffic and driver hours; logistics tenders add contracted networks; navigation products add certified maps. A free browser tool that hands you a clean, exportable baseline with its assumptions printed is not competing with those; it is feeding them.
- Live congestion and ETAs → traffic-aware commercial routing.
- Driver-hours and windows → transport-management systems.
- Certified navigation → licensed map products with update guarantees.
Data & methodology
The selected travel mode and time contours are sent to the Valhalla isochrone service. The polygons are model estimates, not guarantees of access or current traffic.
For source details, licences and model limitations, see Data Sources and Methodology.
Key terms worth knowing
- Isochrone
- The reachable-area polygon for a given travel time from a start point.
- Costing model
- The routing engine's mode profile (auto, pedestrian, bicycle) with its speeds and rules.
Editorial guidance: MapBench explains the method and limitations so the tool can be used as a transparent reference, not as a black-box answer. For legal boundaries, safety-critical routing, surveying, engineering, regulated decisions or official statistics, verify the result with the responsible authority or a qualified professional.
Category: Routing & Travel Time. Results are intended for everyday analysis and planning unless a page explicitly states otherwise.
Method, assumptions & limits
- This tool’s method
- The selected travel mode and time contours are sent to the Valhalla isochrone service. The polygons are model estimates, not guarantees of access or current traffic.
- Before relying on the answer
- Check the stop order, travel mode and whether the result is a network route or a simplified estimate. Repeat the calculation after changing any of these inputs.
- What the result cannot establish
- Road access, congestion and closures can change. An estimated duration is not a live arrival-time commitment.
Coverage: Worldwide. Search, basemap and external data requests may use third-party services; browser-based does not mean every operation is offline. Read the source and licence notes, calculation methodology and privacy policy. If a result looks inconsistent, report a correction with the inputs and mode used.
Frequently asked questions
Clear answers about the calculation, accuracy and appropriate use.
Live traffic?
No — free-flow estimates.
Modes?
Drive, bike, walk.
Does the route include live traffic?
Unless the tool explicitly says otherwise, travel times are planning estimates and should not be treated as live-traffic predictions.
Why is road distance longer than straight-line distance?
Roads must follow the available network, terrain, bridges and restrictions, while straight-line distance measures the geometric minimum between two points.
Can route results change over time?
Yes. Road-network data, access restrictions and routing datasets can change, so recheck important journeys close to travel time.
Does the Drive Time Map include live traffic?
No. Times are computed from the road network and its typical speeds, without live congestion. Treat the bands as planning estimates: a Friday-evening commute will eat into the band that a quiet Sunday morning gives you in full.
Where does the road data come from?
The areas are computed by the Valhalla routing engine running on OpenStreetMap data — the same public network data the routing tools on this site use. New roads appear when the community maps them; a very new estate road may not route yet.
How many time bands can I draw at once?
Up to four contours on one map (for example 15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes), chosen from 10, 15, 20, 30, 45, 60, 90 and 120 minutes. Nested bands make it easy to show a client or a colleague exactly where one promise ends and the next begins.
Why is the shape so irregular compared with a circle?
Because roads are irregular. The polygon reaches along fast, direct routes and stops short where the network is slow, indirect or interrupted by water and terrain. A radius circle is the geometric ideal; this shape is the network's honest answer.
Can I use walking or cycling instead of driving?
Yes — the same contours can be computed for walking and cycling profiles, which follow paths, cycleways and streets open to those modes. The areas are much smaller and often shaped very differently from the driving version of the same minutes.
Is a drive-time area the same as a service area guarantee?
No. It is a planning sketch based on network speeds, not a promise about any particular day's traffic, weather or roadworks. Use it to design territories and test promises before you make them, then sanity-check critical journeys close to the day.
Why does the polygon stop at the coast or a border?
Because the network does. Ferries and crossings are handled according to the routing data; where no routable connection exists within the time budget, the area honestly ends — which is exactly the information a catchment decision needs.
Related tools and resources
Start with the geometric ideal in the Map Radius Tool when you need a simple boundary, then use this map to see what the network does to it. For a single journey's road distance and duration, the Driving Distance Calculator is the direct tool; for several stops in sequence, plan the order in the Multi-Stop Route Planner.
More free tools
Sources, methodology & editorial trust
- ✓ Browser-first processing where supported
- ✓ External sources are documented
- ✓ No account required for public tools
- ✓ Review data sources
Calculations are documented with their assumptions, limitations and source context rather than presented as unexplained answers.
Reviewed and maintained by Aryan Khan, Founder & Editor of MapBench.
Part of our routes & travel time hub
Drive Time Map sits in the routes & travel time cluster, alongside 62 other tools that answer neighbouring questions with different methods or datasets.
You may also need
When this answer is only part of the job, these clusters cover the next step.
Read the guide behind this tool
Reading an Isochrone Map Like a City Planner — Those lumpy drive-time shapes are the city telling you its secrets. How to read fingers, holes and lobes — and use them for real decisions.