Several fascinating Web tools have started to turn around the traditional map, using distance on the map to show places that take longer to reach, in a style known as “travel time maps.” A site called TIMEMAPS does this with the Netherlands:

TIMEMAPS lets you distort a map of the country based on how long it takes to reach any point from a starting location. It also animates how that map changes over the course of the day.

The animation begins at 1:23. Note how regions not accessible in the middle of the night become accessible as the animation gets toward the morning. Meanwhile, the map steadily shrinks, as transit options become more frequent into the daytime.

If someone did the same for a US city, it might be interesting to do the same for driving times, and see how space actually grows during rush periods, as more people traveling and more congestion makes places effectively farther away.

A similar site we’ve discussed before, the Travel Time Tube Map, similarly distorts the iconic London Underground diagram to reflect the actual time to reach each station from a chosen starting point.

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Tagged: maps, netherlands, technology, video

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.