Google Distance

The Google Maps Distance Matrix API is a service that provides travel distance and time for a matrix of origins and destinations, based on the recommended route between start and end points.

google_distance(origins, destinations, mode = c("driving", "walking",
  "bicycling", "transit"), departure_time = NULL, arrival_time = NULL,
  avoid = NULL, units = c("metric", "imperial"),
  traffic_model = NULL, transit_mode = NULL,
  transit_routing_preference = NULL, language = NULL,
  key = get_api_key("distance"), simplify = TRUE, curl_proxy = NULL)

Arguments

origins	Origin locations as either a one or two column data.frame, a list of unnamed elements, each element is either a numeric vector of lat/lon coordinates, an address string or a place_id, or a vector of a pair of lat / lon coordinates
destinations	destination locations as either a one or two column data.frame, a list of unnamed elements, each element is either a numeric vector of lat/lon coordinates, an address string or place_id, or a vector of a pair of lat / lon coordinates
mode	string One of 'driving', 'walking', 'bicycling' or 'transit'.
departure_time	The desired time of departure. Use either a POSIXct time since 1st January 1970, or the string 'now'. If no value is specified it defaults to Sys.time().
arrival_time	Specifies the desired time of arrival for transit requests. Use either a POSIXct time since 1st January 1970. Note you can only specify one of arrival_time or departure_time, not both. If both are supplied, departure_time will be used.
avoid	character vector stating which features should be avoided. One of 'tolls', 'highways', 'ferries' or 'indoor'
units	string metric or imperial. Note: Only affects the text displayed within the distance field. The values are always in metric
traffic_model	string - one of 'best_guess', 'pessimistic' or 'optimistic'. Only valid with a departure time
transit_mode	vector of strings, either 'bus', 'subway', 'train', 'tram' or 'rail'. Only vaid where mode = 'transit'. Note that 'rail' is equivalent to transit_mode=c("train", "tram", "subway")
transit_routing_preference	vector strings - one of 'less_walking' and 'fewer_transfers'. specifies preferences for transit routes. Only valid for transit directions.
language	string - specifies the language in which to return the results. See the list of supported languages: https://developers.google.com/maps/faq#languagesupport. If no langauge is supplied, the service will attempt to use the language of the domain from which the request was sent
key	string - a valid Google Developers Directions API key
simplify	logical - TRUE indicates the returned JSON will be coerced into a list. FALSE indicates the returend JSON will be returned as a string
curl_proxy	a curl proxy object

Value

Either list or JSON string of the distance between origins and destinations

API use and limits

The amount of queries you can make to Google's APIs is dependent on both the service and the API you are using.

Each API has specific quotas and limits. Check Google's API documentation for details.

View your usage at the Google Cloud Console https://console.cloud.google.com/

Each API can only accept and return one request at a time. If you write a loop to make multiple API calls you should ensure you don't go over your quota / limits during the loop.

Examples

# NOT RUN {
set_key("YOUR_GOOGLE_API_KEY")
google_distance(origins = list(c("Melbourne Airport, Australia"),
                             c("MCG, Melbourne, Australia"),
                             c(-37.81659, 144.9841)),
                             destinations = c("Portsea, Melbourne, Australia"),
                             simplify = FALSE)

google_distance(origins = c(-37.816, 144.9841),
    destinations = c("Melbourne Airport, Australia", "Flinders Street Station, Melbourne"))

google_distance(origins = tram_stops[1:5, c("stop_lat", "stop_lon")],
     destinations = tram_stops[10:12, c("stop_lat", "stop_lon")],)

# }