Meet halfway when everyone is walking
When the whole group is walking, the fair meeting point is the place where everyone's walking time is close to the same, measured along real streets rather than as the crow flies. A river with one bridge, a rail line with no crossing or a park that locks at night can turn a short line on the map into a long walk. togather times each person's actual route and shows every time.
On foot, the map lies more than you think
A walking group is the case where the map midpoint looks most convincing and is most often wrong. Distances are short, so a pin in the middle feels obviously fair. But walkers cannot cut across a river, a rail cutting, a motorway or a fenced park, and in a dense old centre the street pattern itself bends every route. Two people who look equally far from a square can be eight minutes apart once you count the bridge one of them has to reach first.
togather times each walk along the real street and path network. The comparison is in minutes, which is what the group actually feels when they arrive.
What fair means for a walking group
Fair is not only about the average. A spot where the walks average twelve minutes but run from three to twenty-five is worse than one where everyone walks between ten and fourteen. togather weighs both: the average walking time and the gap between the longest and the shortest walk. A small gap is what makes a meeting point feel even.
When walking stops being the fair answer
Walking scales badly. Once one person is much further out than the rest, keeping everyone on foot means either a long walk for them or a spot that drags everyone else towards them. Setting just that person to public transport or a bike, and leaving the others on foot, usually finds a fairer place for all of them. Travel mode is set per person, so that is a one-tap change, not a new plan.
Add everyone’s starting point, leave the walkers on walking, and send the result to the group.
How togather works it out
Add everyone's starting point
Enter up to eight starting points. A street corner or a station exit works as well as a home address, and it is usually what people prefer to share.
Leave everyone on walking
Set each person to walking. Every walk is timed on the street and path network, so a detour round a river or a railway shows up in the minutes.
Check the spread before you pick
Each person's walking time appears next to the result. If one walk is twice as long as the rest, the spot is not fair yet, whatever the map suggests.
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
- Is the walking halfway point just the middle of the map?
- Often not. Walking follows streets, bridges and crossings, so the point that sits in the middle of the map can still leave one person going the long way round a river or a rail line. Equal walking time is the useful target.
- How long a walk is too long to keep everyone on foot?
- There is no fixed rule, but once the longest walk passes about half an hour, a short metro or bus ride for that one person often makes the plan fairer for everyone. You can switch just that person's mode and compare.
- Does it account for hills and walking speed?
- Walking times come from the routing network's own estimates at a normal pace. They follow the real streets and paths, but they assume an average walker, so read them as comparable between people rather than exact.
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.
Find your meeting point