I made an interactive art installation on this question once: A black box with a knob where you could adjust how much time you have, then it would offer you (Google streetview) panoramas of the locations it found within your distance, and in the end even print a paper slip with your travel itinerary to take with you.<p>The installation used realtime data (Google directions API): I somehow figured out, that if I would run this from a local machine and reset the browser frequently, Google would let me do this even without an API key… they certainly sensed something was awry and I did get API warnings and captchas because of 'suspicious traffic on my network', but they were nice enough not to block me completely. I strongly doubt this would still work though, this was in 2017.<p>Pictures and videos of the installation: <a href="https://maschinenzeitmaschine.de/derweil/" rel="nofollow">https://maschinenzeitmaschine.de/derweil/</a>
I delight in isochrone maps[0]! There used to be some open source, web interfaces but they all became commercial.<p>An isochrone map is one of the best tools for weekend get-aways, job hunting, and finding a home location.<p>OpenStreetMap[1]! Add it to your site, it will be great hit, in my opinion.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org" rel="nofollow">https://www.openstreetmap.org</a>
You can really see the Paris-centric approach in France: From Paris you can reach almost any other major city in 4h, but on the other hand, all the other metropolis can barely reach 1/4th of the other major population center in 4h.<p>Compare this to Germany where almost <i>any</i> major metropolis can reach 80% of the country in 4h ...
It also shows how much the train networks focus on domestic travel.<p>In nearly all bigger countries it is possible to reach most bigger cities within the 5h.
But journeys in this time-frame seldomly go much beyond the border.
There is still much optimization potential for transnational travel in Europe's train network.
For the Europeans on HN: on the East coast of the US, the furthest you can get by train in ~5h is roughly Boston to NYC, or NYC to Washington, DC. Both are roughly equidistant (~220 miles, ~354 kilometers).<p>One of the perverse things with our passenger rail network is that you can actually take take trains that "only" take 2.5 hours, but: they run nonstop point-to-point, and any subsequent connection you make (e.g. to Richmond, a major city in Virginia) will be on a diesel train that shares trackage with CSX or another major freight line. The end result is that traveling the extra ~90 miles from Washington, DC to Richmond generally takes over 3 hours, when it should really take less than an hour.
You can also go Beijing to Shanghai in 4.5 hours. That's over 1200km or 750mi averaging above 260km/hr.<p>I think it's the fastest long distance passenger service available and has the benefit of being central Shanghai to south-central Beijing (rather than north-east where PEK airport is). That made it noticeably better than business air travel between the two cities.<p>You could also ride the Pudong maglev (at 430km/hr peak and 250km/hr average), but it was never extended from PVG to Jing An and the main Shanghai station.<p>However, now you have to go through security at each end which adds at least 1.5hr, and that's ignoring pandemic restrictions.
Five hours, I assume, is the maximum amount of time an average person can enjoy sitting in a train. With overnight trains making a comeback, there are much more possibilities. I recently enjoyed falling asleep in Central Europe and waking up over the Alps near the sea. Trains are amazing.
Little usability nitpick: it is really hard for me to see the connection Paris - London (less than 2.5 hours in real life thx to Eurostar). You need to very precisely mouse over Gare du Nord, which is hard, since it seems hidden by the other train station and airport nearby.<p>Not sure if at a certain scale, one should see all the conenctions form all the train stations in Paris?
> This map shows you how far you can travel from each station in Europe in less than 5 hours.<p>Aww, seems like Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia aren't a part of Europe, then.<p>But jokes aside, the visualization itself is pretty cool, though it might also be really useful to be able to put emphasis on the actual train tracks, especially in the further zoom levels, though map implementations don't always allow this to be done easily, without too much customization or running your own tile server.
Nice. It doesn't seem to play very nice with cities that have multiple stations. If you hover Paris, Gare de Lyon gets selected most of the time. But if you zoom in, you can select other Paris stations (e.g. Gare de L'Est) which leads to different results
Same thing for public transport in metro areas (great if you’re looking for a new place to live): <a href="https://www.mapnificent.net/" rel="nofollow">https://www.mapnificent.net/</a>
When people talk about how bad trains are in Germany and how good (relatively speaking) they are in Spain, well, one word: connectivity. Hover over any city in Germany and you'll see almost no gaps in the map. Hover over any northern city in Spain and you'll see no direct connection by train among them (!).
Amazing map.<p>Hovering around over South Sweden and North Germany, makes it quite obvious that the Femern tunnel will make a difference in connecting that area.<p>Same for connecting north from Lombardy through the mountains.
It's sad to see how disconnected the national railway systems are in eastern europe. Basically, 5h always fills the national borders but no further in Hungary, Romania, Poland etc<p>E.g., train connections from Czech Republic to southern Germany are missing all together.
As a European it boggles my mind seeing how trains are basically non-existent in the USA (just look at Houston station), given how dominant the whole "Wild West" railroad rush is in everybody's immagination. Railroads are super ubiquitous here, and we've to work with a pretty hostile terrain - Italy has lots of mountains, hills, rivers, and yet has one of the best networks in the world. Most of the USA are basically empty, it would be pretty easy to build high-speed rail.
Why some parts of Europe is missing, e.g. Greece? Source seems to have data for it. Also, it would be neat to see more countries of the world mapped out: Japan, US for a start.
So which starting point covers the largest number of people you can reach? I am guessing Brussels since it covers a good portion of the Blue Banana, plus Paris and other big French cities. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Banana" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Banana</a>
There is a lot of what-if here, but the reality is that most people in the USA prefer the flexibility and speed of (1) Driving wherever and whenever and carrying all your stuff with you, and then (2) flying to your destination for speed. You can cross the east coast in 3 hours or the go to the west cost in 6 on a convenient red-eye.<p>Taking the train is more a novelty, and unclear who would actually use it regularly because it takes much longer (10 hours east cost, 20 hours coast to coast), transport on either endpoint requires you to park or taxi, and you lose all flexibility.<p>We like the idea of the train more than the reality of the train. I've lived in various places around the world where you had to take mass transit always, and all it does is add one to two hours to your commute when I would have much preferred to drive.
I can’t say that’s accurate. For my area it shows that Kassel is 3 hours away, although direct train goes in less than an hour, and even with intermediate stop, it’s slightly more than an hour. South of Germany isn’t connected at all, although I can get to Ingolstadt in less that 5 hours…
Being in the east of France, it's a bit sad how misconnected we are with the west of France. (Lyon <-> Bordeaux you'd think can be done in 2 hours, but no it'll take like 6 hours).
This is great, but it would be better if the selection of the station was a textbox or a smaller map. Right now you have to zoom in to select a station, and then carefully zoom out to see the reach.
I just realized it's not symmetric. If you click Paris it highlights Perpignan (in the South), but if you click Perpignan it doesn't reach Paris at all. Same for Brussels and Newcastle.
From Brussels, Belgium, you can reach in 5h:<p>- Wales and deep into northern England (Newcastle<p>- the whole western border of Germany<p>- the south coast of France<p>- Switzerland<p>I was never into the whole "center of Europe" thing, but this puts things in a different perspective.
Sadly, the trains on the Isle of Wight (off the South Coast of England, south of Southampton and Portsmouth) is not included.<p>I'd be interested in their perspective since you can buy a 'train' ticket which includes a ferry crossing, so the isochrone would either extend up to London and beyond (if you allow the ferry), or be restricted to just the island itself (if you do not).
That is a very nice app and, funnily enough, I was doing this manually (via Trainline) yesterday after watching this Wendover Production video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9jirFqex6g" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9jirFqex6g</a>.<p>One suggestion for the app: allow us to pin a city when clicking on the desktop version ;)
Sometimes city walkability is expressed more simply: each spot gets a color based on the size of the area that you can reach in a fixed amount of time.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map</a><p>So you don't have to manually explore the map.
It would be interesting to see this for the US.<p>You might be able to get from New York City to Boston within 5 hours. If you're leaving from Fargo, though, it would be hard to make it into neighboring Montana.<p>Our best case for taking a coast-to-coast train is 72 hours, but I've never seen a long Amtrak train arrive on time.
Sorry for bringing up buses but that reminds me of this:<p><i>Just how far can you travel by bus from London in 24 hours?</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28262194" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28262194</a> - Aug 2021 (128 comments)
Ukraine data is incorrect, before latest invasion we had multiple semi-fast trains reaching 120-140 km/h between regional centers. Though if it is snapshot of current state of affairs then it can be like that, a lot of trains were canceled or slowed due to war.
This is very timely. In September I will have four days of down time with my wife in Paris. We want to get out of town but don't know where. This gives us some options.<p>If anybody here has suggestions where we can spend a few days taking in non-Parisian France, let me know.
I've had an Amtrak train delayed by more than 5h on the West Coast, so here at least the answer is potentially 0. I grew up in the NE USA where Amtrak is usable, if not up to European standards, so trains here are particularly disappointing.
So it works now and I am sort of disappointed. I can get to Paris and London, which, don't get me wrong, is nice. But Paris is I think three hours and apparently I can't get to anywhere South of there in five.
Which city can you reach the most area in 5 hours?<p>Top contenders:<p>- Paris, Gare de Lyon (doesn't seem to include going to Gare du Nord and going to London in this?)<p>- Brussels — can go as far as Newcastle or Avignon<p>- Random ones in the center of Germany which cover all of Germany
Very well done! I played around with this sort of stuff many years for a property search engine startup. I tried to make a “max commute distance” filter. It was much harder than I thought at the time!
I don’t like trains though, it takes so long especially in a large country like the US. Great for recreation purposes or travel within places closer than 3 hours by car but not otherwise.