Coverage analysis
What 45 minutes covers in San Francisco.
San Francisco occupies a 49-square-mile peninsula tip with water on three sides and steep hills throughout. Drive-time analysis here is dominated by bridge dependencies (Bay Bridge, Golden Gate, San Mateo, Dumbarton) and the BART/Caltrain transit network that often outperforms driving for cross-bay reach.
At 45 minutes, the San Francisco isochrone captures the extended regional draw — a regional footprint where destination-category businesses draw from a wide geographic spread. Unlike a 200–600 km² circle, the real road-network polygon follows San Francisco's actual highway corridors, accounts for bridge and interchange chokepoints, and respects the natural and built barriers that force drivers to detour.
Best-fit categories at 45 minutes: Regional mall anchor, hospital, specialty medical, premium auto, luxury retail, cinema. The 45-minute isochrone is the standard input for regional territory design and logistics network planning.
The city-level population of 873,965 and a median household income of $130,696 give a sense of San Francisco's economic density, but the figure that matters for site selection is the population inside the polygon — not the city as a whole. That number shifts dramatically depending on whether you're drawing from a high-density urban core or a lower-density suburban corridor. Use the tool above to set your actual candidate location, then generate the isochrone to see the real catchment.