A comparative study of methods for drive time estimation on geospatial big data: a case study in usa

Abstract. Travel time estimation is crucial for several geospatial research studies, particularly healthcare accessibility studies. This paper presents a comparative study of six methods for drive time estimation on geospatial big data in the USA. The comparison is done with respect to the cost, accuracy, and scalability of these methods. The six methods examined are Google Maps API, Bing Maps API, Esri Routing Web Service, ArcGIS Pro Desktop, OpenStreetMap NetworkX (OSMnx), and Open Source Routing Machine (OSRM). Our case study involves calculating driving times of 10,000 origin-destination (OD) pairs between ZIP code population centroids and pediatric hospitals in the USA. We found that OSRM provides a low-cost, accurate, and efficient solution for calculating travel time on geospatial big data. Our study provides valuable insight into selecting the most appropriate drive time estimation method and is a benchmark for comparing the six different methods. Our open-source scripts are published on GitHub (https://github.com/wybert/Comparative-Study-of-Methods-for-Drive-Time-Estimation) to facilitate further usage and research by the wider academic community.