How long does it take to travel from London to elsewhere? The answer is provided by this map, showing a set of expanding circles centered on the British capital, each bigger one delineating two extra hours of travel time.
The familiar shape of the world is morphed into grotesque, contorted shapes as these isotemporal lines replace the usual lines of longitude and latitude for frame of reference. Not surprisingly, as different modes of transport must have been taken into account: fast transatlantic jet to New York, slower ground-based transport (car or train) to Penzance. This makes the difference in travel time to both cities from London less than 2.5 hours, while the actual distance between both is a formidable 3,264 miles (5,253 km).
This map predates the opening of the Eurotunnel, which has allowed faster connections between London and Paris (about 2 hours) than shown on this map. Travel time distances from London are:
Under 2 hours
- Birmingham
- Bristol
- Southampton
Under 4 hours
- Norwich
- Manchester
- Amsterdam
- Glasgow
- Edinburgh
- Paris
- Dublin
- Dusseldorf
- Swansea
- Hull
- Milan
- Aberdeen
Under 6 hours
- Newcastle
- Madrid
- Inverness
- Burnley
- Holyhead
- Fishguard
Under 8 hours
- Penzance
- Workington
- Pwllheli
Under 10 hours
- New York
- Stranraer
- Montreal
Many thanks to blogfok for sending in this map, found here on Erik Laakso’s website.
I love maps like this. The problem is, I don’t think the rules used to build it are particularly well set. For example, Stranraer isn’t 9 hours from London if you take that 3 hour plane to Glasgow (Glasgow being shown as 3 hours from London) then a car for the two hours to Stranraer, for a total of 5 hours.
Pwlheli is a confusing one – Google Maps gives it as a five hour drive from London and that tends to overestimate journey times by about 10-20%. Similarly with Workington – it’s a 5.5 hour drive, or 3.5 hours on the train to Carlisle then a 1 hour drive.
I guess the original paper has more information on why all of this is, but thought I’d bring this up for anyone unfamiliar with British transportation networks – it really won’t take you nine hours to get to Stranraer ;-)
Comment by Peter Cooper — June 20, 2009 @ 2:41 pm
This predates the WCML upgrades; Manchester to London is under two hours by train (faster than the plane once you allow for security and travel time to and from the airports).
Glasgow is three hours – more or less the same by train and plane.
Comment by Richard Gadsden — June 20, 2009 @ 3:17 pm
Is it significant that Stranraer, Pwlheli, Penzance and Fishguard are extremities on the rail network – and so have been chosen for that reason, rather than as destinations in themselves?
Comment by Andrew — June 20, 2009 @ 3:31 pm
9 hours to Stranraer, that shocks me, but maybe in 1981 things were slightly different in terms of combinations of flights and roads.
Comment by alfanje — June 20, 2009 @ 3:54 pm
A similar premise in a more modern incarnation is http://www.triptropnyc.com/ which lets you enter an address in the NYC area and then generates a color coded time map. The author has said that a London version is maybe in the works.
Comment by Austin — June 20, 2009 @ 4:12 pm
There should be a French version of this somewhere, specifically showing how the LGV have pulled the regions closer to Paris.
I’ve also seen a much older (about lates 1930s) colored isotemporal map of the UK. The north of Scotland at that time was over 12 hours away.
Comment by Sova — June 20, 2009 @ 4:45 pm
Nice idea, but not a good implementation.
Re: Stranraer, this is slightly over a two hour drive from Glasgow, whereas they are separated by six on the map.
Also in Scotland, John O Groats is roughly six hours from Glasgow or Edinburgh, which are more or less on the way, but is marked as only four hours longer.
Outside the UK, it would have been better to mark cities rather than countries, as travel times outside airports are clearly not accounted for.
Comment by jonm — June 20, 2009 @ 5:14 pm
I suspect this is not meant to include car journeys, but public transport only. As Andrew pointed out, Stranraer, Pwlheli, Penzance and Fishguard are extremities on the rail network.
As someone who chooses not to own a car, I’m very aware that it alters your view of distances to particular destinations. Mostly not a big issue; sometimes it is.
Comment by Gavin Greig — June 20, 2009 @ 7:33 pm
What seems weird is that London-Newcastle takes longer than London-Edinburgh, since they’re basically the same line.
Comment by Colonelgoth — June 20, 2009 @ 7:36 pm
It’s Pwllheli, people! Not Pwlheli. Sorry to be pedantic, but the two ls are pronounced very differently from a single.
Comment by Simon — June 20, 2009 @ 8:15 pm
Strange that Belgium and Brussels are missing, but the Netherlands and France are present..
Comment by Pelle — June 20, 2009 @ 8:30 pm
@ Simon (#10):
Thanks for the pointer. Corrected.
Comment by strangemaps — June 20, 2009 @ 9:44 pm
Of note also is that where driving time is used, it CLEARLY doesn’t take into account how long it takes to leave London city center by car ;)
Comment by Marc — June 21, 2009 @ 1:18 am
Freaky cause it looks like the hands of the ‘Tree Man’ of Indonesia who I just saw on tv.
Comment by Brooklyn — June 21, 2009 @ 1:33 am
Two interesting things I noticed: firstly that Ireland is closer than some parts of Wales and is positioned accordingly in the Bristol Channel!
Secondly how, even though the map is dated 1981, Germany is shown as united. Took me a while to recognize the anachronism, as I’ve become accustomed to the shape of united Germany.
Comment by David — June 21, 2009 @ 2:29 am
The map’s way out of date due to the huge expansion of the low-cost airline networks. You can get from London to Barcelona in an hour and a half.
Comment by Juancho — June 21, 2009 @ 8:05 am
Great.
One of my all-time obsessions was to find some website that will calculate “where can you get from X in Y hours”. Such website should gather info from other ones, like viamichelin, ryanair, train websites.
If such a tool existed, everything for me would change. I know it would take a huge amount of computing power, but hey, wouldn’t it be wonderful?
Comment by Zlatorog — June 21, 2009 @ 9:30 am
[...] The Unevenness of Space-Time Convergence — Strange Maps with a rendering of travel times which is pretty interesting, and also somewhat reminds of the most famous New Yorker cover EVAR. [...]
Pingback by [links] Link salad says happy Father’s Day Solstice | jlake.com — June 21, 2009 @ 2:16 pm
The following map is from 1921 and displays the travel time from London to the rest of the world. But rather than hours, it was still measured in days back then.
http://www.hipkiss.org/data/maps/london-geographical-institute_the-peoples-atlas_1920_the-world-principal-steamship-lines-and-isochronic-chart_3012_3992_600.jpg
Comment by Patrik — June 21, 2009 @ 2:44 pm
Assuming that journey times are estimated from the centre of London to the centre of the other cities, the times for the longer journeys don’t seem to allow for time taken travelling to and from airports, checking in, clearing security, etc. Which, for a short hop, such as Paris, can easily take twice as long as the time you’re in the air.
Comment by chris y — June 21, 2009 @ 3:25 pm
Interestingly, it took 3 hours longer to get to Pwhelli than Hollyhead, when Pwhelli is actually closer geographicaly, and only slightly less accessable by road. Only by using rail routes do you get anything near this distortion.
Comment by Alex — June 21, 2009 @ 3:34 pm
In fact, all the British places are based on rail lines, and other countries on planes.
Comment by Alex — June 21, 2009 @ 3:35 pm
The problem with this map is that it’s a mix of modes, so all the cities in Scotland bar Stranraer have had their travel time measured using door-to-door times with some optimism via plane. The times for Edinburgh and Glasgow even now by train typically average four and a half hours and can reach five sometimes.
What would be better is a multicolour map with each mode shown in a different colour, and ideally with genuine door-to-door times based on averages rather than best cases.
Comment by Alex Ingram — June 21, 2009 @ 4:03 pm
@Patrick 19 – Great map, but are you sure it’s 1921? The filename mentions 1920, but even that seems to be anachronistic, as both the Austo-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires are depicted (A-H I’m sure was dismantled right after WWI in 1918, the Ottoman might still have been in its final stages in 1920-21).
Comment by David — June 21, 2009 @ 4:20 pm
@Sova, and whoever else is interested
I found a similar map of travel times from Paris via rail. It’s from 2001 though, so things have probably changed considerably since then, for example with the LGV they opened to Strasbourg.
http://www.railfaneurope.net/tgv/jpg/traveltimes2.jpg
Comment by Oreo Priest — June 21, 2009 @ 6:04 pm
from my own recent travel experience, some of the distances between relative locations seem disproportionate(taking modern rail improvements into consideration).
these days, london to manchester is just a hair over 2 hrs by train.
a direct train from london to either glasgow or edinburgh takes at least 4.5 hrs.
between glasgow and inverness alone, a direct train today will take you nearly 3.5 hrs.
Comment by twellve — June 21, 2009 @ 8:04 pm
i come from just past pwllheli, it might take 8 hours on a bus to get to london, but in a car i’d say less than 6 hours.
Comment by Hector — June 21, 2009 @ 10:11 pm
Have a look at this other space-time map for France “transformed” by TGV (high speed train)
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3271/2491057681_405a2eb5f8.jpg
Comment by Airain — June 21, 2009 @ 10:17 pm
This map is good. The only thing – I don’t think that you could really made one as of 2009. One circle should be around half an hour then. Because the two hour circle now would be around the Baltics and Finland, because even from there the plane gets to London in 2 hours.
Comment by spam — June 21, 2009 @ 10:43 pm
@david 24 – You’re right. I was looking at several maps from this period and must have mixed them up. This one is indeed from 1920 and is not from the Times Atlas but the London Geographic Institute.
More from this collection at:
http://www.hipkiss.org/cgi-bin/maps.pl?book=London%20Geographical%20Institute%20-%20The%20Peoples%20Atlas
Looking at the other maps, it’s clear that the Austria-Hungery did split after the war.
Comment by Patrik — June 21, 2009 @ 10:58 pm
I use these for teaching the geopolitics of time-space compression:
http://www.tom-carden.co.uk/p5/tube_map_travel_times/applet/
http://www.personalworldmap.org/
Note with this latter map how it’s often cheaper and quicker to travel from Europe to Africa than within Africa
Comment by Ben P — June 22, 2009 @ 7:03 pm
You’d think London itself would be a bit bigger, since (you would think) it can take an hour or so to get from one end to another.
Comment by Darren — June 22, 2009 @ 7:38 pm
I wanted to post the same coment as Darren… so simply +1…
By to the way, love this website
Comment by Ludo — June 23, 2009 @ 9:22 am
I love this stuff.
The first map I made was of driving times in the UK: http://www.davidchatting.com/ipswich-to-everywhere/ – it’s a bit rough but you get the idea
I love how estuaries make places that are geographically neighbours quite distance and how a bridge causes a distortion of the space around it.
I then got really interested in how timetables for public transport distortion geographically over the course of the day, so I made the train_clock map: http://www.davidchatting.com/train_clock/
This shows how long it will take you to get from Ipswich (my home town) to destinations in the UK at any given moment of the day. This creates a weird star-like map where towns move by each other and the shape of the country changes minute-by-minute. The space between towns also becomes difficult to comprehend – you can’t get off the train between stations!
I’m really interested in what the essential properties of a recognisable map are to be able to navigate around it and reliably name the places. It seems you can distort things quite a lot.
I’ve been maintaining a set of links to these sort of maps on delicious:
http://delicious.com/dave_chatting/maps+time
Cheers,
Dave
Comment by Dave Chatting — June 23, 2009 @ 2:58 pm
These maps, while fascinating, can never be accurate. Take Anticosti Island, for example, which lies in the outlet of the St. Lawrence River in Canada. The map would suggest that it’s less than eight hours from London, but that would be true only if one parachuted in! Two-dimensional maps could never convey the true time-distances for all places accurately. Locations near airports would be closer in time; locations far from airports would be more distant in time. The same is true with places on or off highways, railroad lines, etc. From London, it is a quick and easy trip to Frankfurt airport, but considerably more distant (in terms of time) from Koblenz, Heidelberg, Wuerzburg or Marburg, which lie about an hour or two west, south, east and north of Frankfurt respectively. To show this true time-distance relationship, all of the airport locations would have to be “pulled closer” to London, while smaller, more remote villages off the main highways and railroad lines would have to be “pushed away” from London, which would be extremely difficult to depict on a two-dimensional map.
Consider the time-distance from points in Midtown Manhattan to both the street-level lobby of the Empire State Building on the one hand and the Observatory Deck of that same building on the other. Whether measured from the north, south, east or west, the time-distance to the Observatory Deck is greater.
Consider this paradox. Try to imagine a large map of the USA, where commercial flight times between any two airports would be reflected in the length of a line (distance). For airport pairs with higher-speed service, or more direct connections, the “time-distance” would be shorter. For airport pairs with slower-speed service, or with inconvenient connections, the distance would be greater. What would the air-travel time-distance be for the pair Portland ME to/from Provincetown MA, compared to, for example, Portland ME to Cincinnati OH?
Still, these maps are fun to look at.
Comment by Richard — June 24, 2009 @ 2:06 pm
It is possible to convey true time distance for all places in a 2D map; it will just look very distorted as better connected destinations will be placed closer on such a map.
I just created one with Brussels Central Station as the starting point and connecting it to some random cities using only the fastest public transportation connections I could find:
http://www.katania.be/images/travel_time_map_brussels.gif
And although Chimay is a lot closer to Brussels in the real world, with public transportation, you’ld long be in Paris or London before arriving in Chimay.
Comment by patrik — June 24, 2009 @ 4:56 pm
Hello everyboby, This map reminds me a similar map showing France shape modified according to TGV time travel. This map can be found at http://philippe.gambette.free.fr/Train/index.htm
This web page also has two interesting links to similar maps.
Comment by Bernard (from Paris) — June 25, 2009 @ 8:26 am
[...] http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/393-the-unevenness-of-space-time-convergence/ [...]
Pingback by Não importa onde estiver « Movimentos — July 7, 2009 @ 5:47 am
Currently Penzance is around 5 hours 5 minutes from London by rail. Gatwick to Newquay 1 hour 5 minutes by air, though Expedia also offers 7 hours via Manchester and Douglas IOM.
Comment by Martin — July 7, 2009 @ 6:40 am
hi we are a 35 year old uk based travel company we are looking to expand ourselves over the internet would you be willing to exchange links with us mail me at rasmustheband on yahoo.co.in or visit http://www.flybliss.co.uk
Comment by neeshu — July 7, 2009 @ 9:58 am
Having driven to both Aberystwyth and Inverness from the South East I’m pretty sure it isn’t quicker to reach the latter.
Comment by simony — July 15, 2009 @ 2:52 pm
Marc 13 – you’re quite right. I have to go to Milton Keynes quite often; and if I drive it takes an hour to get from central London to the start of the M1, and an hour to get to MK from there. Which is why I get the train.
Comment by Andrea Flowers — July 17, 2009 @ 2:52 pm
[...] concept of time-space maps (and how high-speed rail can change them). Through the comments on a Strange Maps post of one made for Britain in the 1980s, I think I found a number of candidates for the one he’s [...]
Pingback by Link Banana » An American TGV — July 23, 2009 @ 1:29 am
[...] “Patrick” made a map showing the travel time, using public transporation exclusively, between Brussels and a number of European cities. This observation is striking: And although Chimay is a lot closer to Brussels in the real world, with public transportation, you’d long be in Paris or London before arriving in Chimay. [...]
Pingback by Link Banana » More Time-Space Maps — July 23, 2009 @ 3:53 pm