google maps api travel time

• Google Maps Platform
• Português – Brasil
• Maps JavaScript API
• Documentation

Travel Modes in Directions

This example demonstrates the use of the DirectionsService object to fetch directions for different travel modes.

Read the documentation .

Clone Sample

Git and Node.js are required to run this sample locally. Follow these instructions to install Node.js and NPM. The following commands clone, install dependencies and start the sample application.

Other samples can be tried by switching to any branch beginning with sample- SAMPLE_NAME .

Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License , and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License . For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies . Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Last updated 2024-04-12 UTC.

Predicting future travel times with the Google Maps APIs

Elena kelareva.

Product Manager, Google Maps APIs

• If your application is used for scheduling deliveries, and you want to ensure you’ve allowed enough time between deliveries so your drivers won’t be late, you might want to use the pessimistic travel time estimates.
• On the other hand, if you’re building a thermostat app, and you want the house to be warm by the time your user arrives home from work, you might want to use the optimistic travel time estimate to calculate when the user is likely to arrive.
• If you want to give your user an estimate of the most likely travel time to their destination, the default best_guess traffic model will give you the most likely travel time considering both current traffic conditions and historical averages.

“Taking the guesswork out of knowing how long it will take to drive between homes will help us provide a better customer experience to our users” – Curtis Howell, Product Manager Customer Engagement, Redfin

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Predicting future travel times with the Google Maps APIs

Nov 10, 2015

[[read-time]] min read

• If your application is used for scheduling deliveries, and you want to ensure you’ve allowed enough time between deliveries so your drivers won’t be late, you might want to use the pessimistic travel time estimates.
• On the other hand, if you’re building a thermostat app, and you want the house to be warm by the time your user arrives home from work, you might want to use the optimistic travel time estimate to calculate when the user is likely to arrive.
• If you want to give your user an estimate of the most likely travel time to their destination, the default best_guess traffic model will give you the most likely travel time considering both current traffic conditions and historical averages.

“Taking the guesswork out of knowing how long it will take to drive between homes will help us provide a better customer experience to our users” – Curtis Howell, Product Manager Customer Engagement, Redfin

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Google Distance Matrix API vs. the TravelTime API: Which is Best for You?

9 minute read

By: victoria akinsowon

This post compares the product features of the Google Distance Matrix API and the TravelTime API. If you’re just looking to compare pricing and API limits, read this post instead. It compares prices with Google, Mapbox, Here, Graphhopper and more.

In this post, we’ll compare the differences between Google’s Distance Matrix API and the TravelTime API, including their matrix functionality, map services and support.

What is the Travel Time Matrix API?

The Travel Time Matrix API allows you to calculate travel times to thousands of locations simultaneously, within milliseconds and for any mode of transport.

TravelTime also has two other APIs:

• Isochrone API: Create isochrone maps to visualise where you can reach within a time limit
• Routes API: Generate A to B routes, including turn-by-turn directions
• Consumer-facing websites and apps: You can use the TravelTime API to filter, rank and list location search results by travel time on your website or app. The API can filter thousands of locations in milliseconds and is used in a range of different use cases, including recruitment and property websites.
• Location analysis: You can also use TravelTime for location analysis , including office relocation or retail site selection. Here, the API can be used in a number of GIS software, including ArcGIS, QGIS and Alteryx.

What is the Google Distance Matrix API?

The Google Distance Matrix API allows you to calculate travel distance and time between multiple origins and destinations.

Common use cases for the Distance Matrix API include vehicle routing and analysis of traffic systems.

At a glance: the Google Distance Matrix API vs. TravelTime API

Comparing distance matrix features

In this section, we’ll compare the functionality of Google’s Distance Matrix API with that of the TravelTime API.

The TravelTime API allows you to calculate a matrix of travel times between thousands of origins and destinations. Additionally, you can set a maximum travel time cut-off to automatically filter locations as reachable or unreachable.

Finally, TravelTime currently supports over 100 countries , with public transport data available for the vast majority of them. You can check out our list of supported countries here .

The Google Distance Matrix API lets you calculate the travel times for up to 25 origins or 25 destinations in one request.

‍ Key differences

1. matrix speed & performance.

With TravelTime’s performance and limits, you can calculate large volumes of times in under 100 milliseconds. This means it can be used within consumer-facing location searches without impacting app load times.

In contrast, it would be too slow to do this with Google’s Distance Matrix API if the consumer app has more than 25 locations.

2. Matrix multi-modal transport options

The TravelTime API calculates travel times for all transport modes. For public transport, you can choose one mode of public transport (which includes bus, train, subway, tram, coach and ferry) or you can also combine modes. This includes driving and train combined, driving and ferry combined, and cycling and ferry combined.

The Google Distance Matrix API calculates distances and times for public transport, driving, walking and cycling.

3. Fare data options

TravelTime provides fare data for public transport in the UK only. This includes data for standard, weekly, monthly and annual tickets.

Google provides fare data for public transport where available. This includes data for a standard ticket.

Comparing map services

Both Google and TravelTime also offer map services in addition to their matrix functionality. In this section, we’ll compare the map services of their APIs.

Isochrone API

Isochrones are maps that allow you to visualise all reachable locations within a time limit and by mode of transport.

With the TravelTime API, you can create high-resolution isochrones for any type of public transport, as well as driving, cycling and walking. You can also combine transport modes – for example, to see where you can travel to within 30 minutes by driving and train. 

The API comes with adjustable parameters, which means you can customise your desired maximum walk times, transport connection times and more. What’s more, you have the flexibility to create isochrones through the API or, alternatively, though one of our dedicated GIS plugins .

In contrast, the Google Distance Matrix API doesn’t support the creation of isochrones through its API, nor does Google itself provide a built-in way to generate isochrones. 

You can use the TravelTime Routing API to create A-to-B routes, including turn-by-turn directions, and visualise these routes on a map or as a set of door-to-door instructions.

This can be done for all modes of transport, including all forms of public transport.

If you want to do routing via Google, you will need to use Google’s separate Directions API.

You can use the Directions API to receive directions between locations for different transport modes, including driving, walking, cycling and public transport. Note that this is priced separately.

Geocoding and map tiles

Free unlimited access to geocoding and map tiles is included with every paid TravelTime API plan.

For geocoding, coordinates can be used to display addresses on a map or as inputs for other TravelTime API endpoints.

You will need to use Google’s separate Geocoding API to return geocoding information, and its separate Maps API for map tiles.

How to create a distance matrix with the TravelTime API

To create a distance matrix, you first need to get a TravelTime API key .

Creating a distance matrix requires a single POST request, with a number of required parameters. These include:

• Transportation type (these include ‘driving’, ‘public_transport’ and ‘walking’)
• Departure or Arrival time
• Travel time

To calculate a matrix with multiple origins and multiple destinations , you can simply add multiple searches into the request. Each of these searches can then include up to 2,000 locations. Learn more about creating a distance matrix here.

Alternatively, try our Matrix Developer Playground for free here .

TravelTime  

As standard, TravelTime’s support plans come with documentation, a comprehensive knowledge base and tutorials.

However, there are additional tiers that come with even more support. For example, the Standard tier includes a support portal, email support, onboarding workshop and a dedicated Customer Success Manager.

The Premium tier includes all the above, plus a 12-hour guaranteed first response time and 99.9% service uptime SLA.

• ‍ Discover our support plans here

Google 

Support for the Google Distance Matrix API is comprised of a Stack Overflow Community, where you can ask technical questions, and is monitored by members of the Google Maps Platform team.

Alternatively, you can create support cases directly to the Maps Support Team – although this is restricted to Project Owners, Project Editors and Tech Support Editors only. According to Google, response times can take up to 24 hours on weekdays.

What customers say about the TravelTime API

Comprehensive transport data.

“TravelTime was the tool that stood out: it was the most reliable and the scope of its transport data was broader than any other service we considered.”

- Hugo Michalski, Co-Founder & CTO, Side

$1 See how Side uses TravelTime

Layering travel time data with additional datasets

“It’s been great to analyse the data we get from TravelTime alongside other datasets like census or population data, to tell us how many people we can reach from certain locations.” 

- Tim Hirst, Data Scientist, SEGRO  

Learn how SEGRO uses TravelTime

Better user experience

“TravelTime has enriched our user experience and increased conversions by 10%."

- Christophe De Rassenfosse, Chief Product Officer, Totaljobs

See how Totaljobs uses TravelTime

Reliable and fast

“The TravelTime API is easy to use, reliable and fast - it’s an asset to our search functionality.” 

- Leo Lapworth, Web Operations Director, Foxtons

Learn how Foxton uses TravelTime

TravelTime vs. Google: Which solution is best for me?  

Both the Google’s Distance Matrix API and the Travel Time Matrix API can calculate travel times and distances between locations with different transport modes.

However, the TravelTime API is more cost-effective than the Google Distance Matrix API for calculating large matrices of travel times at once.

And with a dedicated in-house data team , TravelTime offers a comprehensive and broad range of transport data, which includes all forms of public transport. This means that you can easily calculate travel times by the transport mode of your choice without breaking the bank.

TravelTime also comes with additional functionality that you may not have previously considered.

These include the ability to visualise travel times on a map (isochrones), as well as routing, geocoding and map tiles – all of which are included within all paid plans. And unlike Google, you won’t have to pay for separate APIs if you were looking to use these additional map services.

To learn more about what you can do with the TravelTime API,  check out our documentation  or to try TravelTime for yourself,  sign up for a free API key .

Calculate thousands of travel times with the TravelTime API

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Predicting Future Travel Times with the Google Maps APIs

by ATTOM Team | Apr 25, 2018 | ATTOM Insights , Property Data Dynamics

Google announced a new feature in the  Google Maps API , the ability for developers to compute travel distance and time between a number of points. This is an interesting feature which can be directly applied to the Real Estate Industry. Their launch partner is  Redfin  (note: Redfin is a current client of Onboard).

“Taking the guesswork out of knowing how long it will take to drive between homes will help us provide a better customer experience to our users” – Curtis Howell, Product Manager Customer Engagement, Redfin

• Duration and Distance  – Estimate travel time and distance based on a recommended route.
• Driving – Indicates distance calculation using the road network.
• Walking – Requests distance calculation for walking via pedestrian paths & sidewalks (where available).
• Bicycling – Requests distance calculation for bicycling via bicycle paths & preferred streets (where available).
• Transit – Requests distance calculation via public transit routes (where available). One or more transit modes can be specified: Bus, Subway, Train, Tram and/or Rail.
• Traffic  – Request using Best guess, Optimistic or Pessimistic calculations based both historical traffic conditions and live traffic. Optionally you can specify either a departure_time or an arrival_time.
• Search Boundary  – The Google API calculates the distance between two known points. It does not offer the ability to determine the outer boundary based on time and/or distance from a location. This is important in Real Estate because the consumer would like to know all properties that are within commuting time/distance from work.
• Cost  – Standard  billing  based on usage. First 2,500 elements are free. $0.50/1,000 up to 100,000 after that. However keep in mind with that plan Google reserves the right to serve ads. You will most likely want to upgrade to their Premium service,  Google Maps API for Work . In which case you will need to speak with a sales person and negotiate pricing.
• Google Map Display Required  – “Use of the Google Maps Distance Matrix API must relate to the display of information on a Google Map; for example, to determine origin-destination pairs that fall within a specific driving time from one another, before requesting and displaying those destinations on a map. Use of the service in an application that doesn’t display a Google map is prohibited.”

How we can help

Onboard Informatics has an  IDX API  which enables our clients to offer commute search in two ways:

• Flat Fee Pricing  – Onboard prices access to the IDX API based on a monthly fee per MLS feed.
• Technology Agnostic  – The API produces XML or JSON, you decide. And can be used with any mapping software. We also offer up geographic boundaries in a variety of formats; GeoJSON, KML, WKT, and/or ESRI shapes.

If you are interested in finding out more about our solutions, contact us today. Overall, the Google announcement today is positive.  We’re always excited when companies push for progress in real estate technology and work toward continuing to improve the experience for home buyers and sellers everywhere.

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Excel, JavaScript, Android, and other Programming Tutorials

Excel Function to Calculate Travel Time and Distance using Google Maps API with VBA

In this article, we will create an Excel function to calculate the distance between two addresses using the Google Maps directions API. This will allow you to get the travel time between the two locations. The format of the function will be as follows: =TRAVELTIME(origin, destination, api_key) , =TRAVELDISTANCE(origin, destination, apikey) . The origin and destination will be strings, and can be either an exact address or the name of a place. In order to use the function, an API key is required. The “Getting Started” page can help you with this: http://bit.ly/googlemapsgettingstarted . Create a new project and make sure the Directions API is added.

Step 1: Create a new macro file and add VBA-JSON

Because the Google Maps Directions API is a JSON API, we will use VBA-JSON to make it easy to use the results from the web request. You can download the latest version from here: https://github.com/VBA-tools/VBA-JSON/releases . Download and extract the zip file. Then, open your macro file. Open the Visual Basic Editor (Alt + F11).

In order to import the VBA-JSON file, go to File > Import File… (Ctrl + M). Select JsonConverter.bas . A JsonConverter module will appear in the sidebar.

Next, make sure the appropriate references are enabled. Go to Tools > References… In addition to the references already selected, check off “Microsoft Scripting Runtime” (for Dictionary support needed by VBA-JSON) and “Microsoft WinHTTP Services, version 5.1” (to make the HTTP request to the API). If you require support for Excel for Mac, you will need to install VBA-Dictionary from the author of VBA-JSON. More details can be found at the bottom of the project homepage: https://github.com/VBA-tools/VBA-JSON .

Step 2: Create the functions

With the references configured, we can now write the code for the function. The code is relatively simple. It is simply takes the three parameters and formats them into a web request. The response of the web request is then parsed by VBA-JSON and the relevant variable returned. Note that the request may return multiple routes, but then function simply returns the time of the first route. The default mode is driving, but refer to the Directions API documentation for information on other modes and adjust the strURL variable accordingly.

To insert the code, create a new module with Insert > Module. Then paste the following code:

Save the file. You should now be able to use the functions from within Excel. Place your API key in cell A1, then try the following: =TRAVELTIME("24 Sussex Drive Ottawa ON", "Parliament Hill", A1) . This returns a travel time of about 435 seconds. If you would like this to be displayed in minutes and seconds, try this function: =FLOOR.MATH(A8/60)&" minutes "&MOD(A8, 60)&" seconds" where A8 is the cell with the travel time in seconds. This prints a helpful “7 minutes 15 seconds” for the 24 Sussex example. We can also find the distance. Try the following: =TRAVELDISTANCE("24 Sussex Drive Ottawa ON", "Parliament Hill", A1) . It returns a distance of 2667 meters. Convert to kilometers with this: =ROUND(A9/1000, 1)&" km" .

Note: The Google Maps Directions API always returns distances in meters. Convert to KM or Miles as you wish. This can be done in Excel or by modifying the functions in VBA.

That’s it! You should now have a working travel time function. All you need now is a list of addresses to use it with. If you would like to pull a list from the web or local JSON file, check out Import JSON Data in Excel 2016 or 2019 or Office 365 using a Get & Transform Query .

Google Maps Travel Time

The google_travel_time sensor provides travel time from the Google Distance Matrix API .

You need to register for an API key by following the instructions here . You only need to turn on the Distance Matrix API.

Google now requires billing to be enabled (and a valid credit card loaded) to access Google Maps APIs. The Distance Matrix API is billed at US$10 per 1000 requests, however, a US$200 per month credit is applied (20,000 requests). The sensor will update the travel time every 5 minutes, making approximately 288 calls per day. Note that at this rate, more than 2 sensors will likely exceed the free credit amount. While this call frequency can not be decreased, you may have a use case which requires the data to be updated more often, to do this you may update on-demand (see automation example below).

A quota can be set against the API to avoid exceeding the free credit amount. Set the ‘Elements per day’ to a limit of 645 or less. Details on how to configure a quota can be found here

Configuration

To add the Google Maps Travel Time integration to your Home Assistant instance, use this My button:

If the above My button doesn’t work, you can also perform the following steps manually:

Browse to your Home Assistant instance.

Go to Settings > Devices & Services .

In the bottom right corner, select the Add Integration button.

From the list, select Google Maps Travel Time .

Follow the instructions on screen to complete the setup.

• Origin and Destination can be the address or the GPS coordinates of the location (GPS coordinates have to be separated by a comma). You can also enter an entity ID that provides this information in its state, an entity ID with latitude and longitude attributes, or zone friendly name (case sensitive).

Dynamic Configuration

Tracking can be setup to track entities of type device_tracker , zone , sensor and person . If an entity is placed in the Origin or Destination then every 5 minutes when the platform updates it will use the latest location of that entity.

Tracking entity to entity

Origin: device_tracker.mobile_phone Destination: zone.home

Tracking entity to zone friendly name (e.g. “Eddies House”)

Origin: zone.home Destination: Eddies House

Entity Tracking

• If state is a zone then the zone location will be used
• If state is not a zone it will look for the longitude and latitude attributes
• Uses the longitude and latitude attributes
• Can also be referenced by just the zone’s friendly name found in the attributes.
• If state is a zone or zone friendly name then will use the zone location
• This includes all valid locations listed in the Configuration Variables

Updating sensors on-demand using Automation

Using automatic polling can lead to calls that exceed your API limit, especially when you are tracking multiple travel times using the same API key. To use more granular polling, disable automated polling.

You can use the homeassistant.update_entity service to update the sensor on-demand. For example, if you want to update sensor.morning_commute every 2 minutes on weekday mornings, you can use the following automation:

For more detailed steps on how to define a custom polling interval, follow the procedure below.

Defining a custom polling interval

If you want to define a specific interval at which your device is being polled for data, you can disable the default polling interval and create your own polling automation.

To add the automation:

• Go to Settings > Devices & Services , and select your integration.

• Go to Settings > Automations & Scenes and create a new automation.
• Define any trigger and condition you like.

• Save your new automation to poll for data.

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The Weather Channel's new AI tool will help generate forecasts for your local news

The next time you check your local weather report , it might just be AI-generated.

In an announcement today , The Weather Company, parent company of The Weather Channel, debuted ReelSphere. The new tool -- which combines AI analytics with an existing tool, Max -- is designed to help local meteorologists focus on telling the big stories on TV instead of getting bogged down with minutia.

Also: AI is outperforming our best weather forecasting tech, thanks to DeepMind

Traditionally, part of a news meteorologist's job is taking the time to make videos and graphics that change for every hour or region. 

With ReelSphere, local personalities can access highly accurate weather information and alerts that integrate with Max, the system that creates those green screen weather maps seen in local news. AI takes data from The Weather Company's API and other sources and automatically builds near real-time digital weather content that can be used as a brief snippet during a broadcast, for social media, or for a streaming channel. 

The data shown adapts to conditions. If rain is expected, an area for precipitation levels appears. If the weather is expected to be clear, a beach forecast might be added for the weekend.

News stations can utilize an AI voice in English or Spanish, or the meteorologists can use their own.

Any script used to convey the information will still be written by humans, and while the content generated by ReelSphere requires little oversight, humans can intervene and edit the information if the AI gets something wrong.

Also: Amazon CEO: generative AI 'may be the largest technology transformation since the cloud'

A large language model will be used, but which one wasn't specified. 

Local weather is the biggest draw for news stations, The Weather Company says, and people often use multiple resources for forecasts because they find they can't fully trust any one. In fact, according to a study by SmithGeiger , only 22% of respondents are satisfied with the forecasts and reports they receive.

If that weather forecast is fine-tuned to be hyperlocal, viewers are more likely to engage. 

Apple's new AI model could understand your home screen and supercharge Siri

Ai startup mistral launches a 281gb ai model to rival openai, meta, and google, the new google search powered by next-gen ai may be subscription-only.