The Walk Score web site has a neat feature called a Transit Time Map that shows where one can travel in 15, 30, and 45 minutes on transit. The user selects his or her starting location and departure time, and the system draws a map showing where you can go on transit within 15, 30, or 45 minutes.
The maps are currently only available for San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and DC, so I decided to make a 30-minute map for COTA. The map below shows how far you can travel by a combination of transit and walking when leaving High & Broad at 5:00 PM. Local routes are shown in blue and areas covered by express routes but not local routes are red. I have labeled the map with the route numbers that would take a rider to that location on the map. Click on the map for a larger version, or here to open a new window with the Google maps version.
COTA 30-Minute Map
Unfortunately, I don’t know how to make the map dynamic and interactive like WalkScore does, but I still think making maps like this could be useful for both riders and transit planners.
Riders can see what is accessible from downtown in a given time period. This could help choose places to live and work.
Transit planners can use it to set goals. Let’s say we want 50% of the region’s population to be within 30 minutes of downtown. What do we need to do to achieve that? Can we speed up service anywhere? Can we add new express service? Is there anywhere a new pedestrian connection could open up access to an existing route?
Mobility is important. If transit wants to compete with automobiles and gain significant mode share, it needs to move people around the region quickly. This is especially true in a city like Columbus where congestion isn’t that bad and parking isn’t that expensive. This is one way to measure mobility that I think could be a very useful planning tool.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Columbus Underground, John Clem. John Clem said: Interesting, would be much better with some light rail. RT @XingColumbus: A 30-Minute Transit Time Map for COTA : http://ow.ly/2pUrZ [...]
Very useful. Thank you.
[...] 7, 2010 by John Due to a shortage of time, I didn’t give my 30-Minute map much detailed analysis. I want to follow up with a string of thoughts about mobility and bus [...]
How frequent are those routes?
I’m working on a frequent network map (inspired by Jarrett of course), but it’s slow going because I’m pretty much always busy. Nevertheless, Columbus has three routes that run every 15 minutes or better for at least a portion of the route during most of the day (6 AM – 7 PM) on weekdays; the #2 N High/E Main, the #1 Cleveland/Livingston, and the #10 E Broad/W Broad. The rest of the local routes (blue) run at lesser frequencies, mostly every 20 to 30 minutes during mid-day periods. The express routes (red) are generally two trips inbound in the AM and two trips outbound in the PM, although some do a little more than that.
[...] thinking of adding a screen line for 15 minute and 30 minute rides from downtown, similar to my 30-minute COTA map. Stay tuned for [...]
New mapping tool Mapnificent is going something similar, but interactive. Still in BETA and no Columbus in the system yet, but worth checking out and playing around with:
http://www.mapnificent.net
[...] how far you can travel by transit and walking combined in an amount of time. It’s like my 30-minute map, except you can choose any origin (I only did it from High & Broad) and the maximum amount of [...]