Coverage analysis
What 15 minutes cycling covers in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles is the canonical case study for why drive-time matters more than distance. A 5-mile straight-line radius can translate to a 12-minute drive at 10am and a 55-minute drive at 5pm, and any trade-area study that ignores this is effectively fiction.
At 15 minutes by bike, the Los Angeles cycling isochrone captures the neighbourhood cycling zone — the area where cyclists make routine, repeat trips without deliberate trip planning. Unlike a flat radius circle, the real cycling-network polygon follows Los Angeles's actual bike lanes, greenways, and low-traffic streets — reaching further along protected corridors while contracting where motorways, rail yards, and rivers lack cycle crossings.
Coverage area at 15 minutes cycling: ≈ 8–15 km². Common applications for this zone include urban fitness and specialty grocery site selection, food-hall trade area analysis, cycling infrastructure planning.
The city-level population of 3,979,576 and a median household income of $65,290 give a sense of Los Angeles's economic density, but the figure that matters for cycling catchment analysis is the population inside the polygon — not the city as a whole. That number shifts significantly depending on whether your origin is in a dense 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 cycling catchment.