In cities where streets are laid out on a grid, a common approximation for
drive times from point A to point B is the "dog-leg" distance divided by
speed. In other words, instead of using the striaght-line distance, you
use the distance of the sides of the triangle for which the straight-line
route is the hypotenuse. If you call the straight-line distance c, and the
other two sides of the triangle a and b, then the ratio between a + b to c
is (a + b) / sqr(a^2+b^2). If a and b are equal, then this reduces to 2a /
sqr(2*a^2) or 2 / sqr(2), or about 1.414.

That's pretty close to what you get, so you must be riding about as far in
the east-west direction as you do in the north-south direction?

- Bill Thoen


On Fri, 2 Apr 2004, Christof Kaiser wrote:

> Hi out there,
> 
> on my push bike, I have a Garmin Geko 201 mounted on, which is a
> wonderful device. Since it does not have street data on it, I am
> navigating with compass directions.  The remaining distance the unit
> returns to reach the desired waypoint is of course like the crow flies.
> However, as a cyclist, I stick to the roads.
> 
> Does anybody have experiences which the common ration between the
> straight distance and the road distance is? Sure, you are right if you
> say: depends on the road network!  However, for the region I am living
> in ( 7�13'13"E 51�29'18"N ), I experienced a more or less constant
> factor around 1.45 .  To make it sound more scientific, I ll simply call
> it square route(2).
> 
> Does anybody have values for other regions?


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