Revival of the 15min neighbourhood tool

[dabreegster]

Inspired by recent collaborations and a curiosity about how LTNs can be placed near areas with good proximity to amenities, I've reorganized and improved the 15m tool, which has been mostly abandoned since early 2021.

I usually don't re-deploy a web demo before a release, but made an exception here -- try it at: http://play.abstreet.org/dev/fifteen_min.html?system/gb/leeds/maps/north.bin

Start from a single building

mode1.mp4

Imagine evaluating a possible place to live. What's a 15 minute "walk" away? (The speed and types of roads valid to cross are configurable) The goal here is specific detail -- there are 5 grocery stores nearby, yes, but are they up to someone's personal tastes? They can click the category and see the specific list.

Start from an amenity

mode2.mp4

This floods 15 minutes from all buildings satisfying some category. Any uncolored space is far away from that amenity -- so this could be used to look for "food deserts" or places where a new school / gym / hospital might be needed.

Score homes by access to amenities

mode3.mp4

Here you can select the categories that matter (possibly all of them). The tool floodfills from every building with those amenities, and each building reached gets its score increased by 1 per category. So if you select 4 categories, any particular house is scored 0 to 4, based on which categories are nearby.

Scope / granularity

The other projects in this space I'm familiar with do something like the 3rd mode, scoped to the entire UK. The granularity is usually a large region like an MSOA, with the goal of getting down to smaller OA areas. This 15m tool differs on both counts -- it's limited to an imported study area, usually roughly city-sized. But it attempts much more detail, giving scores to each building.

I have a bunch of ideas for improving the new stuff here, but I'll post it in #393 for longevity