Travel Cost Matrix

The Travel Cost Matrix tool computes travel time or distance between a set of origins and a set of destinations, producing a table that can be used for accessibility analysis, location planning, and spatial modeling.

1. Explanation

The Travel Cost Matrix calculates the travel cost (time or distance) between every origin–destination pair in two input layers, for a selected routing mode. The output is a table where each row represents one O-D connection and includes the origin identifier, destination identifier, and the computed travel cost.

The Travel Cost Matrix is designed for batch computation across many origins and destinations at once. This makes it the right tool when you need the raw cost data to feed into further analyses, such as location scoring, supply-demand matching, or custom accessibility indices.

2. Example use cases

• Computing walking times from all residential buildings to the nearest schools to identify underserved areas.
• Calculating car travel times between a set of warehouses (origins) and retail stores (destinations) for logistics optimization.
• Building an input matrix for a custom accessibility score that weights travel time by destination attractiveness.
• Assessing how many destinations are reachable within a given travel time threshold from each origin.
• Comparing travel cost differences between two transport modes (e.g., cycling vs. public transport) for a set of O-D pairs.

3. How to use the tool?

1

Click on Toolbox and under Accessibility Indicators, click on Travel Cost Matrix.

Routing

2

Select the Routing Type to use for travel cost computation.

Walk

Considers all paths accessible by foot.

3

Choose whether to calculate the travel cost based on Time or Distance, and set the corresponding limit.

4

If choosing Time, you can also set the Speed.

Hint

For suitable travel time limits by amenity type, see the Location Tool from the City of Chemnitz.

Bicycle/Pedelec

Considers all bicycle-accessible paths. Accounts for surface quality, smoothness, and slope. For Pedelec, slopes have lower impedance than standard bicycles.

3

Choose whether to calculate the travel cost based on Time or Distance, and set the corresponding limit.

4

If choosing Time, you can also set the Speed.

Hint

For suitable travel time limits by amenity type, see the Location Tool from the City of Chemnitz.

Car

Considers all car-accessible paths. Accounts for speed limits and one-way restrictions.

3

Choose whether to calculate the travel cost based on Time or Distance, and set the corresponding limit.

Public Transport (PT)

Considers all locations accessible by public transport, including inter-modal transfers and station access/egress.

3

Select the Public transport modes to analyze: Bus, Tram, Rail, Subway, Ferry, Cable Car, Gondola, and/or Funicular. Then you can select the Day, Start Time, and End Time for the analysis time window.

4

Optionally, click on Advanced Configurations to set the Maximum Transfers and configure the Access mode and Egress mode.

Origins

5

Select your Origins Layer. This should be a point layer where each feature represents a starting location.

6

Select the Origin ID Field. This field uniquely identifies each origin in the output table.

Destinations

7

Select your Destinations Layer. This should be a point layer where each feature represents a target location.

8

Select the Destination ID Field. This field uniquely identifies each destination in the output table.

9

Click on Run.

Hint

Calculation time scales with the number of O-D pairs. Check the status bar for progress.

Results

Once the calculation finishes, a table layer is added to the map panel. Each row represents one origin–destination pair that falls within the specified travel cost threshold.

Column	Description
origin_id	Identifier of the origin feature (from your selected Origin ID Field)
destination_id	Identifier of the destination feature (from your selected Destination ID Field)
travel_cost	Travel time (minutes) or distance (meters), depending on the selected measure type

O-D pairs that exceed the maximum travel cost are excluded from the output.

A Destinations point layer is also added, containing all original destination attributes enriched with the computed travel_cost value for each point.

Tip

Want to use this matrix for further analysis? Connect the result table as input to other tools in a Workflow or export it as CSV for use in external tools.

4. Technical details

Travel costs are computed using the same routing engine as the Catchment Area tool, ensuring consistent results across all accessibility analyses in GOAT. For each origin, the routing algorithm explores the network up to the specified maximum cost and records the cost to each reachable destination.

Computational considerations

• The number of calculations scales as O × D (number of origins × number of destinations). Large datasets with many origins and destinations will take longer to process.
• Using a realistic maximum travel cost limit significantly reduces computation time and output size.
• For Public Transport, the travel cost represents the average travel time for all feasible trips departing within the specified time window.

Output geometry

The Travel Cost Matrix produces a table (non-spatial) layer. To visualize the connections on the map, use the Origin-Destination tool, which can take an O-D table and a geometry layer to draw flow lines.

Hint

For further insights into the routing algorithm, visit Routing.