Nearby places, distances and travel times

Places and journeys, without a lifestyle score

Nearby places help you inspect everyday services around a plot: schools, shopping, healthcare, transport, recreation and daily services. Bilby displays locations, distances and available journey times. It does not turn them into a lifestyle or house-matching score. The nearest item is a distance result, not a recommendation about quality.

Where the places come from

The collection uses OpenStreetMap objects obtained through Overpass. Tags identify categories, Swedish names are preferred when present, and point coordinates or an object’s representative centre locate it. The same source object is deduplicated by its type and identifier. Two different mapped objects for the same real venue can still remain.

Search radii are 15 km for most groups and 25 km for healthcare. Each subcategory keeps a limited nearest set, usually three or five results. The overview can select a diverse subset rather than every stored place. An absent venue can mean incomplete mapping, an unmatched tag, a result limit or collection failure; it does not prove there is no service.

Distance and time use different inputs

Names, addresses, opening hours and websites reflect available source tags. Check the venue’s own information before relying on an opening time or school offer.

How distances and times are transformed

Distance is the great-circle distance between the two coordinates, using an Earth radius of 6,371,008.8 m and rounded to metres. Places are ranked by that distance within each subcategory. It does not trace roads, gates, pedestrian entrances or the driveway.

Journey times come from separate routed requests for walking, regular cycling and driving. Bilby stores valid non-negative durations in seconds, then rounds to minutes for display, with a minimum of one minute. Values at least an hour display hours and remaining minutes. Missing routes are omitted for that mode; the site does not fill them with straight-line distance divided by an assumed speed.

Fictional distance and journey

Two fictional points on the equator one degree of longitude apart are about 111,195 m apart using Bilby’s distance function. This checks the units; it is not a Swedish travel route. Separately, a returned walking duration of 725 seconds becomes 12 min; 3,650 seconds becomes 1 h 1 min. A missing cycling duration remains unavailable even if walking and driving times exist.

A lake, railway or restricted road can make an actual journey much longer than a nearby straight-line distance suggests. A place can therefore be first in the distance list without having the shortest travel time.

Coverage and freshness

OpenStreetMap is contributed data and may lag changes in businesses, routes and entrances. The map position may be the centre of a large building or area, not its accessible entrance. The routing profiles are estimates, not current traffic, a public-transport timetable or an accessibility guarantee. Weather, terrain, personal pace and access restrictions can change the trip. Provider errors or unavailable routing configuration can leave places visible with no travel times; that does not mean zero travel time.

Sources and review

Collection, normalisation, routing and the plot lifestyle/project-summary callers reviewed 18 October 2026. Individual data freshness follows the collected records and provider data, not this article date. OpenStreetMap OpenRouteService matrix These services provide place and route evidence; Bilby’s grouping and display rounding are separate transformations.