A fair meeting point when everyone travels differently
When one person takes the metro, another cycles and a third drives, the fair meeting point is the one where their journey times are close, each timed on their own network. A map midpoint ignores the rail line, the one-way system and the bike route. togather times each person by their own mode and compares everyone in minutes.
A mixed group is the normal group
Ask a group of friends how they are getting to dinner and you rarely get one answer. Someone is on the metro, someone is riding over, someone has the car because they are heading on afterwards. Most halfway tools pick one mode for the whole group, and every journey gets timed as if it were that mode. The answer is fair to a group that does not exist.
Why a single mode gets it wrong
Each mode bends the city differently. Public transport pulls the fair point towards the lines and the interchanges. Bikes take nearly direct routes. Cars follow the road network, one-way systems and the ring road. Put all three in one group and the place that is fair by distance can be a short drive, an easy ride and a two-change metro trip. Nobody planned it that way; the tool just could not see it.
How togather compares them
togather times every person on their own network: transit for the metro rider, bike routes for the cyclist, roads for the driver, streets for anyone walking. Then it compares them in the one unit they share, which is minutes. The score looks at the average journey time and the spread between the longest and the shortest journey, so a spot that is quick for most but punishing for one person does not win.
You can still change one person’s mode and see the spot move. That is often the quickest way to settle an argument about who should take what.
Add everyone’s starting point, set each person’s own way of getting there, and send the result to the group.
How togather works it out
Add everyone's starting point
Enter up to eight starting points, one per person. Each row keeps its own travel mode, so nobody has to agree on how the group gets there.
Set each person's own mode
Choose public transport, cycling, walking or driving for each person. The metro rider is timed on transit, the cyclist on bike routes, the driver on the roads, all at the same time.
Compare everyone in minutes
The result shows each person's journey time side by side, so the group can see whether the spot is even before anyone sets off, whatever they are travelling by.
Worked through, city by city
These guides name the interchanges that actually work as a fair midpoint in each city, and why the geographic middle tends to be the wrong answer there.
Questions
- Why not just use the midpoint and let everyone get there however they like?
- Because the midpoint is fair in distance, not in time, and different modes turn the same distance into very different journeys. The metro rider might need two changes while the driver gets there in ten minutes.
- Do most halfway tools support different transport per person?
- Many set one mode for the whole group, usually driving, so everyone gets timed as if they had a car. togather sets the mode per person, which is the only way a mixed group gets a time it can trust.
- What if one person's mode has no route to a spot?
- If no public transport route connects everyone, togather says so and can offer to switch that person to another mode and try again, rather than returning a spot one of you cannot reach.
Also worth reading
Settle it in about a minute
Add everyone’s starting point, pick how each person travels, and send the result to the group. No download, no sign-up.
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