Travel Time & Distance

Estimate distance and duration of a road trip.

Travel between two distant cities.

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cities = {Entity["City", {"Lisbon", "Lisboa", "Portugal"}], Entity["City", {"Beijing", "Beijing", "China"}]};

This is the geodesic distance between them.

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GeoDistance[cities]

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This is the length of the computed road trip.

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TravelDistance[cities]

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And this is the estimated driving time, assuming continuous driving with no stops.

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TravelTime[cities]

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This object contains the actual set of travel instructions.

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td = TravelDirections[{Entity[ "City", {"Lisbon", "Lisboa", "Portugal"}], Entity["City", {"Beijing", "Beijing", "China"}]}]

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Represent the trajectory (in red) on a Mercator map and compare with the geodesic trajectory (in blue), which is shorter, as you saw before.

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GeoGraphics[{Thick, Red, GeoPath[td], Blue, GeoPath[{Entity["City", {"Lisbon", "Lisboa", "Portugal"}], Entity["City", {"Beijing", "Beijing", "China"}]}]}, GeoProjection -> "Mercator", GeoGridLines -> Automatic]

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An azimuthal projection shows more clearly that the geodesic is shorter than the travel path.

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GeoGraphics[{Thick, Red, GeoPath[td], Blue, GeoPath[{Entity["City", {"Lisbon", "Lisboa", "Portugal"}], Entity["City", {"Beijing", "Beijing", "China"}]}]}, GeoProjection -> "Mercator", GeoGridLines -> Automatic]; Show[%, GeoProjection -> "LambertAzimuthal", GeoZoomLevel -> 4]

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