Well done. I hacked together something similar about a year ago when I moved to San Francisco, because I needed a place within walking distance to my work, within walking distance to BART (for my girlfriend's commute), and that allows cats [1]. It helped me find the perfect place.
It's cool to see that there is now a general-purpose tool like the one that I made last year. I'll definitely use it next time I move. A couple things about this tool weren't obvious to me on my first experience:
1) I didn't know what a "walk score" was. I looked briefly for an explanation on the site, but didn't find one. At first I thought higher was worse, as if it were a measure of how far you had to walk to get to work. But by playing around on the site for a bit, it seems like higher is better, and it seems to be a measure of how accessible shops and necessities are by walking out your front door (that alone is really cool). My apartment scores a 92.
2) One implication of not understanding the "walk score" was that I thought the walk score filter was to limit the search results by how long your commute was. When I input my work address, my apartment wasn't within the search radius, so I actually wanted to expand the search radius. (Walking 2 miles to work everyday is a nice way to get some exercise, but my commute is only 10 minutes if I decide to bike.) It took me a minute to notice the "time" filter at the top of the page.
3) Lastly, I didn't see how to filter by whether a place allows dogs or cats, but then I found that you can expand the filter box to filter by pets, price, and bedrooms. Perfect.
Now that I've figured out those three issues, the site is easy to use and I look forward to using it next time I move. It makes the tool that I hacked together for this purpose obsolete.
Yes, Padmapper does this general kind of thing but it doesn't offer the ability to limit a search based on commute times (which is the title of the post.)
I was corrected in another post and neglected to update this one. I just couldn't see the options for some reason (perhaps because they were super secret :)).
http://padmapper.com is a much better system than this & it also includes the walkscore of an area. It's a site that maps out apartments from craigslist & other sources on a google map.
Have used it to find my last ~7 apartments/houses.
I like how this site offers a feature where you tell it how long of a mass transit commute is acceptable and it shows you those places. I don't think padmapper offers that.
No, it doesn't although it does have an option to show a walk score (which you might be thinking of). Note that a "walk score" is different than commute time: a walk score is how generally walkable an area is for everyone while a commute time is dependent on another location.
Can you tell me where one can find the option to limit matches based on mass transit distance from some location? (In general, when you say "yes it does" offer some feature, it would be helpful to describe where in the UI it can be accessed, otherwise we'll have a long "yes it does", "no it doesn't" conversation. The burden of proof is on the person claiming something exists rather than the one claiming it does not. :))
You can find what I believe he is talking about buried in the last level of padmapper's menus along with it's crime and walkscore overlays. It's mostly just a text box where you type some number of minutes and a location and it highlights the area you can reach by walking from the provided location for the given number of minutes, following roads and paths on google maps.
EDIT: I'm looking to move across the bay, and this has brought some areas of Oakland to my attention that I had previously neglected. Too, it's a cool hack. So -- useful, and "I wish I'd thought of it". Killer combo.
Love the walkability score concept. Current digs get a score of 92, but that isn't obvious to folks that don't know the area so this did very well to figure that out. Falls down just a little on commuter trains, which don't seem to get a bonus versus buses, though in real life, the trains are faster, easier, and less tiresome.
However, the car commute times from a certain address seem computed oddly.
Picking, for example, 199 Elm Street, New Canaan, CT, shows 10 minute drives from what it considers main roads (because they have route numbers?) while not revealing the parallel side roads which actually have much lower times thanks to no traffic lights or stop signs. I've checked a number of areas on both coasts, and the same seems to be true: car commute times are based on main routes, not low traffic alternate routes. (The mountain roads NW of LA instead of the interstate are another example.)
That said, this is fantastic, and since the map is shown, you can probably eyeball the alternate routes to find a perfect low hassle drive.
Will be recommending this to my realtor friends working in highly walkable areas to help show the benefits.
Neat! I love how it can figure out what (possibly discontiguous) areas give the required commute time by transit. Doesn't seem to have any apartments, though.
EDIT: It finds apartments in New York; maybe it just doesn't work in Canada. Which is odd, given Craigslist works fine in Canada and it figures out commute times in Canada.
This is a much needed and well implemented tool for apartment searchers, well done! I live in Atlanta and have always considered commute time when looking for a home and searching for jobs. I've looked for tools like this for years and haven't found anything that comes close.
Wow, that is very cool. I'm totally going to recommend it to new employees who are looking for apartments.
It seems to correctly pick up pockets in San Francisco where you can take BART from and not show you things closer to your destination, but out of reach of mass transit options.
Now, if only there was a way to enter 2 addresses (for spouses/roommates) and have it give you the places with the best cumulative commute times.
EDIT: Just saw Mapnificent does this!
It seems like it doesn't know that you can walk across bridges. I tried it with my work address "1 Main St, Cambridge MA" and it showed me walkable apartments in Cambridge only, even though there were closer apartments just across the Longfellow bridge in Boston.
When I switched to any of the other options it showed me Boston places.
This is a great idea but it doesn't seem to work well yet.
I tried 'mass av 77 cambridge ma' (MIT) and apartments within 5 min walking distance from that address where supposed to take 14 mins according Walkscore. Also, it doesn't make sense to me to show a transit commute for such apartments.
This is great, we thought about something similar when finding a new office. The middle-point between 3 coworkers, with least commutetime for everyone.
We did find something in the end, but it was a really manual process.
Rebranding it and doing an new-office-locator might work as well. :)
I had a bug to report: When I move the slider on the 'number of bedrooms' and make it '1', I cannot change it (to '2', say). I am using chrome 14.0.835.186.
Love this. I've been trying to get my wife to move downtown for a while, this actually shows there are units in our market available. Thank you so much!
It's cool to see that there is now a general-purpose tool like the one that I made last year. I'll definitely use it next time I move. A couple things about this tool weren't obvious to me on my first experience:
1) I didn't know what a "walk score" was. I looked briefly for an explanation on the site, but didn't find one. At first I thought higher was worse, as if it were a measure of how far you had to walk to get to work. But by playing around on the site for a bit, it seems like higher is better, and it seems to be a measure of how accessible shops and necessities are by walking out your front door (that alone is really cool). My apartment scores a 92.
2) One implication of not understanding the "walk score" was that I thought the walk score filter was to limit the search results by how long your commute was. When I input my work address, my apartment wasn't within the search radius, so I actually wanted to expand the search radius. (Walking 2 miles to work everyday is a nice way to get some exercise, but my commute is only 10 minutes if I decide to bike.) It took me a minute to notice the "time" filter at the top of the page.
3) Lastly, I didn't see how to filter by whether a place allows dogs or cats, but then I found that you can expand the filter box to filter by pets, price, and bedrooms. Perfect.
Now that I've figured out those three issues, the site is easy to use and I look forward to using it next time I move. It makes the tool that I hacked together for this purpose obsolete.
[1] https://github.com/dcuddeback/apartment-scrape