We are excited to introduce Isochrones with depart_at, powered by Mapbox proprietary traffic data. The Mapbox Isochrone API has been a valuable tool for developers and managers, solving distance and time problems across a variety of industries and uses. Now, with the addition of Isochrones with depart_at, users can take their analyses a step further by incorporating predicted traffic data for future dates.  

Accurately predict ETAs

We have repeatedly heard from our customers that they love the ability to deliver high-resolution polygons with accurate temporal and spatial resolution. Because many customers use Isochrones for planning, they need to be able to create their Isochrones for a certain day of the week and time of day. To meet user needs, we have added the depart_at feature to enhance the accuracy of Isochrones for a time in the future with the benefit of typical traffic patterns.

Powered by precise traffic data

Isochrones with depart_at is powered by Mapbox proprietary traffic data from over 700 million monthly active users across over 45,000 different applications built with Mapbox. This highly diversified and distributed data source generates more than 400 billion live location updates from the ground each month — derived from more than 300 million miles of driving data per day. Mapbox automatically benchmarks Traffic Data against observed moving vehicles (“ground truth”) over a data sample of more than 1 million trips every day. Machine learning techniques use this validation to continuously improve over time, achieving industry-leading accuracy. Isochrones with depart_at use the past 90 days of history to calculate the most accurate and up-to-date traffic information for any day of the week or time of day.

Seamless workflow integration

The depart_at feature is easily incorporated into a standard Isochrone API call. After signing up to have the feature added to a Mapbox account, simply add the departure time, formatted as a timestamp in ISO-8601 format in the local time at the isochrone origin point. 

For example, to set a depart_at time for 12 March 2024 at 15:32 local time, append “&depart_at=2024-03-12T15:32” into the query:

$ curl "https://api.mapbox.com/isochrone/v1/mapbox/driving/-86.911519, 
40.424658?contours_minutes=5,10,15&contours_colors=6706ce,04e813,4286f4&pol
ygons=true&depart_at=2024-03-12T15:32&access_token=YOUR_MAPBOX_ACCESS_TOKEN
"

The isochrone is calculated using historic traffic for the day of the week and the time of day indicated while also taking timed turn restrictions and conditional access restrictions into account based on the requested departure time.

Try Isochrones with depart_at

Isochrones with depart_at is available now by signing up for the public preview here.