If you want to travel, how do you know what places are an hour away from your current location? Or, if you’re running a business, how do you pick a warehouse at a convenient location to store your products? The answer is to use a driving radius map, which will help you plan and make the right decisions.
Understanding how to create and use these maps can provide deep insights. Learn what is possible with maps with driving radius in this guide.
What Is a Driving Radius Map?
A driving radius map is a map that shows you where you can reach depending on time constraints. You need to choose a starting point, which acts as the center. Generally, you’ll use landmarks, zip codes, or addresses as the focal point.
It also needs guidelines like the maximum driving time for visualization. These data points help you create a driving radius on a map.
For example, you want to go on a long drive but don’t want to drive for more than two hours. Simply searching for places and finding how long it will take to reach is time-consuming. Instead, you choose the starting point as your current location and set the constraint as two hours. With this type of map, you can plot a radius of how far you can travel per your requirements.
5 Different Ways To Use a Map With Driving Time Radius
Map driving time radius has a lot of use cases because of how flexible they are. They provide valuable insight for improving decision-making. Below, you’ll find common use cases for these maps:
1. Choose Optimal Delivery Routes
Selecting the correct delivery route is a vital decision for an organization. For instance, your employees have to make multiple deliveries during the day. With a driving radius on your map, you’ll know where people can reach within the specified time. This reduces delivery times along with fuel and operational costs. Not only will your customers be happy with your service, but so will your employees.
2. Find Ideal Locations for Setting Up Offices or Stores
The location you choose for a store or office plays a significant role in your staff’s productivity. If it is too far from most of your employees, you’ll notice a drop in their performance. In the long run, this affects your employee turnover rates, ultimately impacting your organization’s success.
A commute time map with a driving radius can show how long it will take to reach your office. You can factor in the mode of transportation and traffic in different regions. This will help you decide whether the new office’s location is ideal.
3. Improve Supply Chain Management
Supply chain management is essential to a successful business. For instance, how do you choose your distribution centers for your organization?
You can locate key vendors and customers from your business within a driving radius. It will help you pick hubs for efficient transportation of your products while keeping costs low.
4. Optimize Your Sales Strategy
The insights these maps provide can help improve your sales strategy significantly. For instance, you can use these charts to understand whether your business is accessible to your target audience. Similarly, you can see the proximity of your clients based on drive time.
It will help your sales team decide when to schedule meetings and who to meet. In other words, it can improve your organization’s relationship with your clients.
5. Plan Business Trips and Team-Building Activities Efficiently
Taking a break from business is essential, as it can help improve focus and productivity. Too much work will result in burnout, affecting your organization in the long run. You can find places to take your staff on a team-building trip within a driving distance radius. Not only will you discover several places of interest, but they will also be a reasonable distance from your office.
Similarly, you can also use these maps to set up business meetings. With a driving radius, you can choose locations convenient for you and your clients.
Can Google Maps Show a Driving Radius?
When discussing driving radius, you’ll need mapping software to see what’s within your reach. The obvious choice is Google Maps because of its accessibility, features, and popularity. This makes you think—can Google Maps show a driving radius?
Unfortunately, you cannot show a driving radius on Google Maps. Fortunately, there are workarounds to draw a circle on Google Maps. However, they don’t take into consideration the driving time. You must place markers inside the radius to know the driving time.
For instance, Map Developers have a Draw a Circle Tool. It uses Google Maps as its foundation and places circles on the map. You need to enter the location along with the circle’s radius in miles or kilometers. However, you can’t save or import the map to Google Maps.
Another solution is to use the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC’s) Circle Plot tool. You must know the location’s longitude and latitude to use this tool. A simple search on Google Maps will provide this information. Input this data into the Circle Plot tool and choose the circle’s radius and color. Create a KML file using your geographic data and import this file as a layer in Google My Maps. You’ll see the circle for the specified location in the saved maps section.
What Is 1-Hour Driving Radius Map?
When learning about this topic, it’s common to ask yourself—what is a 1-hour driving radius map? Well, it is a visualization of how far you can travel from a location in an hour. You can use this method to locate places you can reach within 60 minutes.
It is helpful in various situations. For example, you run a mobile repair shop in a specific area. By plotting the one-hour driving radius, you can identify all the localities where you can provide your service.
Or, let’s say you’re holding an event in a brick-and-mortar store. With this driving radius, you know which regions you should target via marketing to attract an audience.
How to Map a Driving Radius With Mapize?
Mapize makes creating a map with a driving radius is a straightforward process. It is a great way to visualize what is around a specific location. Below is a guide explaining how to map a driving radius with Mapize:
- Select the starting point for your radius. Provide an address, longitude and latitude coordinates, or a zip code. The online map builder will use this as the reference for the drive time map.
- Right-click on the starting point and select Add Radius.
- A popup appears where you can customize the circle. You can choose the radius range and add fill and border colors.
- Once it creates the radius, mark locations within it individually. This will give you the travel times to various pins on the map.
- Save the map on Mapize; you can embed it on your website or share it with others. There’s also the option to download your custom interactive map for offline viewing.
Mapize also has several features to customize the custom map. For instance, you can swap out the pins for custom icons. This is helpful if you want the map to match a theme or your brand’s colors.
You have the option to change the color of the radius to improve readability. What if you want to include multiple locations on your custom map? Rather than marking them individually, you can upload a spreadsheet with the necessary geospatial data. Mapize will plot the points on your custom map automatically. This will help save time after you create a radius map.
Join Mapize for free today to make a custom driving radius map as per your requirements!
