Cartoo
March 8, 2012 1:37 PM   Subscribe

Cartoo uses Google Maps to show you how far you could get by car, bike, or foot in a set amount of time.
posted by Paragon (33 comments total) 30 users marked this as a favorite
 
Mapnificent is a similar tool for public transport in some cities.

I first used it to cut my time to pinball down to 22 minutes via train and subway.
posted by helicomatic at 1:45 PM on March 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


In the time it took to search how far from New York I could get by car in 4 hours I actually walked to Boston.
posted by nathancaswell at 1:50 PM on March 8, 2012 [8 favorites]


woah that was a crazy sentence
posted by nathancaswell at 1:50 PM on March 8, 2012 [2 favorites]


Huh. I live right on the edge of a mountain range, and the two-hours-on-a-bicycle perimeter extends substantially farther into the valley than it does into the mountains. That's either very lucky or very clever.
posted by workerant at 1:50 PM on March 8, 2012


show you how far you the average person could get by car, bike, or foot in a set amount of time.

I'm wicked fast.
posted by jimmythefish at 1:53 PM on March 8, 2012 [1 favorite]




Wow, I was just asking for this the other week.

I'm surprised at how generally even the outlines of the areas are, though. I thought it would be pretty tentacular, with spikes extending along major highways.
posted by dfan at 1:55 PM on March 8, 2012


But... doesn't Google Maps just do this?
posted by lumpenprole at 1:55 PM on March 8, 2012


My map IS pretty spiky, looks kinda like the old 'certificate of achievement' gold foil stickers you'd get in elementary school.
posted by pupdog at 1:57 PM on March 8, 2012


But... doesn't Google Maps just do this?

This is like the reverse --- not how long to get to a place, but what places can you get to in an amount of time. I don't know any way to do that on Maps itself.
posted by wildcrdj at 1:59 PM on March 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


It looks like it aggregates the distance calculations from Google Maps in a circle around the starting point, and uses that data to create a perimeter.
posted by Paragon at 2:00 PM on March 8, 2012


Fairly accurate for my commute, if I assume that I'm a little faster than the expected average on a bike.

I want a setting that adjusts for BAC / THC content.
posted by brennen at 2:00 PM on March 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


Interesting, seems like you're limited to 9 hours and 59 minutes. What If I want to drive a REALLY long time?
posted by pupdog at 2:01 PM on March 8, 2012


What pupdog said.
posted by Kitteh at 2:04 PM on March 8, 2012


It has a flattering understanding of how fast I bike. Nice idea.
posted by Mngo at 2:08 PM on March 8, 2012 [2 favorites]


Also a little disheartening to see that given ~10 hours of walking I still wouldn't have made it from home to work...
posted by pupdog at 2:08 PM on March 8, 2012


This is a good motivator to use a bike or walk because it shows "all the places you could go in just n minutes."

Sometimes I get stuck in a mindset about what counts as "nearby" on bike because I think in the wrong categories: "Woodstock is two neighborhoods over (with a horrible, congested arterial in between)" instead of "Wow, Woodstock is only 15 minutes away." Seeing the big, pink travel radius jogged me into thinking about a number of possibilities I'd discarded because they just seemed sort of far away.

Having looked at this, I'm noticing how there's a better grocery store, a hardware store, a public library, a few restaurants I like and a couple of other attractions within an easy ride. I know how to get to those places already, and I'm not in the habit of just looking places up on Google Maps to see how long it takes to get there. This tool put it all front and center with one query and a minute of looking around inside the biking radius.

So, it's not some tool I'd go visit every day. If I were concerned about the specific travel time between points A and B, I probably would just use Google Maps. But it's a good thing to use to get a sense of possibilities once in a while.

If I were one of those guys from the city government who goes around encouraging people to bike, I'd definitely include something like this in a presentation as an educational tool.
posted by mph at 2:17 PM on March 8, 2012 [6 favorites]


I tracked 45 mins out using the (experimental) biking option from (near) downtown SF. Given the shading into the East Bay, I think (experimental) is a good qualifier.

nathancaswell, your sentence is improperly punctuated. A comma should go between the end of the prepositional phrase which ends with "hours" and the subject of the sentence, "I". Just saying.
posted by mistersquid at 2:18 PM on March 8, 2012


Alright, listen up, people. Our fugitive has been on the run for ninety minutes. Average foot speed over uneven ground barring injuries is 4 miles-per-hour. That gives us a radius of six miles. What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area. Checkpoints go up at fifteen miles. Your fugitive's name is Dr. Richard Kimble. Go get him.
posted by scalefree at 2:23 PM on March 8, 2012 [5 favorites]


Interesting, seems like you're limited to 9 hours and 59 minutes. What If I want to drive a REALLY long time?

When gas was close to $1/gallon we used to see how far we could go in X hours. We would pick a general route to follow so that everyone involved in the race would wind up in a similar location.

The 24 hour version (done only once) got me from Columbus, OH to Gallup, NM. My team won. We all met up in OKC for celebratory dinner before the drive back.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 2:23 PM on March 8, 2012 [2 favorites]


Hmmm. It's very conservative. It was about 25% out on the distance of my weekly 3 hour commute. I am assuming it considers only the maximum speed as being at the speed limit?

Having just checked, it's wrong even for Google's own directions - Google gives about 2hrs 20 minutes to the same point that Cartoo suggests is the 3 hour limit along the highway I take. Google does give 3 hrs 45 for the entire trip that I usually do in 3 hours (reliably and consistently) so it's not surprising it's conservative to my own experience.

Without major spikes up the highways that shows a progressively smaller spread out from the highway (especially in the Toronto/Windsor corridor I travel on). I hope it is more accurate for the biking and walking directions, because the car ones don't seem to good. The edges don't line up with my own experience of how long it takes to get places - some of the places out in the sticks it thinks I can get to I think is extremely optimistic and some of the stuff near the Highway in all directions is pessimistic in the extreme.

One thumb down.
posted by Brockles at 2:34 PM on March 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


scalefree: "One does not simply walk into Mordor."

12 hours, eh? Lines right up with how long the LotR movie trilogy is.
posted by deborah at 2:38 PM on March 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


The speed estimates are nuts. My most frequent long drive is about 1:45, and Cartoo's estimate got me maybe two-thirds of the way there in that time. I drive fast, but not that fast.
posted by aaronetc at 2:45 PM on March 8, 2012


My biggest qualm with the 20-minute neighborhoods is they've set the bar too low. Much of the city already meets this requirement and having a grocery store 20 minutes away is not very impressive. I'd like to be working towards 5 or 10 minute neighborhoods.

I'm in agreement, but man would 20 minutes be a huge improvement for a lot of US urban areas, where walking time to the nearest grocery store is don't be a dumbass you'll be hit by a truck get in the car already.
posted by brennen at 3:04 PM on March 8, 2012 [6 favorites]


MacGruber, the bomb is going off in under a minute!

Hold on, Cartoo is going to tell us the best direction to run to escape the blast radius; it's going to finish calculating soon.

posted by BrotherCaine at 3:08 PM on March 8, 2012 [2 favorites]


It doesn't seem to be accurate in the details, but it's a nice way to shake up your thinking about where you can go.

Mister Fabulous - a few years ago I realized that people of the future would be amazed by the stories my generation would tell about casual use of gasoline. That story of yours will be like people in Wyoming in the 1890s telling how they once killed 147 buffalo in one day.
posted by benito.strauss at 3:09 PM on March 8, 2012


Cartoo is severely overestimating my ability to walk on water. Unfortunately Mapnifier has the same problem.
posted by fermezporte at 3:35 PM on March 8, 2012 [2 favorites]


I tracked 45 mins out using the (experimental) biking option from (near) downtown SF. Given the shading into the East Bay, I think (experimental) is a good qualifier.
That's because Google sends the bike/walk directions onto ferries it knows about.
posted by akgerber at 3:37 PM on March 8, 2012


Mister Fabulous - a few years ago I realized that people of the future would be amazed by the stories my generation would tell about casual use of gasoline. That story of yours will be like people in Wyoming in the 1890s telling how they once killed 147 buffalo in one day.

I completely agree.

We did it around 2003 when gas was around $1.30-1.40/gallon. At $1.35/gal it cost around $155 for my car (at 28 mpg). Same trip today is $425/team. There's no way I'd play that game again having to pay $210 to do it. And hell, we had 5 teams doing this back then.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 4:12 PM on March 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


To me it sounds expensive, and, with the right people, fantastic.
posted by benito.strauss at 11:55 PM on March 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


Oh bugger, there's a Southport somewhere else.
posted by b33j at 3:35 AM on March 9, 2012


dyndns is blocked at work, but while I've been househunting the past few weeks, I've often wished for something described exactly like this, even going so far as to put it on my "to-build" list, which, given how long the existing list is, means that an alpha build would have been available by Q4 2015.
posted by mysterpigg at 11:04 AM on March 9, 2012


This works very poorly in rural areas (upstate New York, for example). It's telling me that a drive that takes 11 minutes is on the perimeter of a one-hour zone. Hm.
posted by yellowcandy at 10:22 PM on March 9, 2012


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