An Intro to Isochrones

Post date: Sep 11, 2017 1:56:11 AM

One way to depict the ease of access to various places from a point of interest is through the use of isochrones--polygons drawn around a point of interest, containing a set of points to which it takes the same amount of time to travel from the point of interest.

A variety of websites exist that assist in the development of isochrones. The website daaab.it allows the user to plug in two points and automatically calculates the time required to travel between these two points. One of the downsides of daaab.it is that it only allows the user to plug in two sets of points at a time, and has no way of creating lines of equal travel time other than through guesswork.

Another website, isochrones.com, allows the user to specify a starting point and input a travel time and an average speed in order to create isochrones with respect to the first point. This methodology for creating isochrones, however, should not be used for this project because it assumes the same average speed for all distances and only creates isochrones for travel paths around expressways. As a result, the system that isochrones.com uses cannot be used for a geographically small city with several ways of getting around, but no major roads.

For this project, we will be required to create isochrones for various points of interest in the city of Venice, both with the city’s current transportation infrastructure and with each of our proposed solutions. Obviously, it will be impossible to use the aforementioned apps to create isochrones for transportation systems that aren’t even in place yet, so we will have to find methods for estimating travel times on these systems. Fortunately, we will be having a telephone conference with Paolo Corposanto, our Project Liaison and--in the words of Prof. Carrera--a huge transportation “geek”, on Tuesday, and Mr. Corposanto might be able to offer us advice for overcoming this logistical obstacle.

-John Bonina

Image source:

Depiction of isochrones on a map [Digital image]. Retrieved from http://iso4app.net/.