Spacetime maps: A map that warps to show travel time

It's a shame that they're warping an image, rather than warping map data. Having distorted labels is very distracting and makes it hard to get a sense of whether this could possibly be useful.

Author’s video about building this map is pretty interesting <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=rC2VQ-oyDG0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=rC2VQ-oyDG0</a>

Like the idea - lived in LA my whole life and it wasn’t until the start of covid, when I was able to commute across huge swaths of the city in the order of dozens of minutes rather than hours, did I realize how distorted my view of its physical size was - in places like LA, when asked how far something is, an angelino will almost always respond in a measurement of time rather than distance.

I&#x27;m not sure I properly understand what these maps are visualizing. I&#x27;d have expected the London public-transport map to heavily compress adjacent tube stations and expand tube &quot;dead-zones&quot; but this doesn&#x27;t appear to be the case. It can take me 10 minutes to get to central but 60 mins to get somewhere equidistant in z2 or z3.

NYC seems like bad default example. I had to check other cities to &quot;get&quot; what&#x27;s this site about. With NYC - everywhere is similarly far.

TBH kind of disappointed by how little it distorts, especially for cities with stereotypically difficult travel times by car like LA. almost loos like random distortions as opposed to something to pattern match. Really the only thing noticeable is bodies of water distort the map the most (which explains why LA doesn&#x27;t get that distorted).<p>Would be kind of nice for when i click the point that all the points distort based on that point instead of globally trying to position each point relative to every other point.

Does anybody have any recommendations on self-hosted ways to create isochrone maps? I&#x27;ve been looking at OpenRouteService, Valhalla, and OpenTripPlanner, but I&#x27;m finding it difficult to compare them. Don&#x27;t seem to be many &quot;experience reports&quot; online.<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;GIScience&#x2F;openrouteservice">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;GIScience&#x2F;openrouteservice</a><p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;valhalla&#x2F;valhalla">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;valhalla&#x2F;valhalla</a><p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;opentripplanner&#x2F;OpenTripPlanner">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;opentripplanner&#x2F;OpenTripPlanner</a>

Reminded me of MIT&#x27;s game &quot;A Slower Speed of Light&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gamelab.mit.edu&#x2F;games&#x2F;a-slower-speed-of-light&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gamelab.mit.edu&#x2F;games&#x2F;a-slower-speed-of-light&#x2F;</a>

I don&#x27;t exactly understand how it works. E.g. in NYC, Bushwick to Flatbush is notoriously slow (meandering buses only), while Flatbush to Chinatown is quite fast (direct trains over the Manhattan bridge). Despite that, no matter where I click, I only see same twitching map, not a map twitching in a way that would reflect the travel time from the point I click.<p>(I ignore the idea of traveling by car in thickly populated areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn; it only makes sense if you value your personal space way more than you value both your money <i>and</i> time, and don&#x27;t have to park.)

I really appreciate this and hope to see more time infused maps. As we get ready for the arrival of lunar time, these tools move the needle in the right direction.

Previous discussion on HN <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39808215">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39808215</a><p>If you&#x27;re on mobile, click the hamburger menu and enable &quot;Focus on hover&quot;

What an absolutely fascinating concept