A cool interactive map of Metro Vancouver, called time2reach, can help you figure out how long it will take you to get to where you need to go, essentially using colours.
It’s simple to use and was created by Henry Nguyen, a student at the University of Waterloo.
You double-click on the map to set your starting point, and thanks to how the map is colour-coded, it’ll show you how far and quickly you can travel to that point.
Colours range between yellow and dark purple, with the former being faster and the latter being longer.
Most of Metro Vancouver is covered in the map, though large parts of Surrey are blacked out.
time2reach
You can also select the mode of transportation, including bus, subway, tram, train or ferry, as well as the starting time and maximum trip duration.
time2reach
Aside from Vancouver, you can select other cities like New York, San Francisco, Paris, Chicago, Montreal and Toronto, where Nguyen says the origin story of time2reach began.
“I originally built this tool while looking for co-op housing in Toronto,” Nguyen told Daily Hive.
He wanted to find a cheap place with solid transit connections for commuting to his office. Nguyen was new to Toronto then and had no sense of what was near or far.
“I found myself switching back and forth between Marketplace and Google Maps, trying to rank each listing and checking the commute times.”
While it might’ve started as a tool to help Nguyen find rental housing, he now believes it’s an excellent tool to increase transit awareness.
Most people who have responded to the tool on social media seem to agree.
“The click anywhere feature is so cool,” one Reddit user said in response to a post about the map.
“Very nice design,” another user said.
Click here to try it yourself.