CARTO Launches TravelTime H3 in its Location Intelligence Platform

CARTO has launched H3-based isochrones powered by TravelTime, bringing scalable travel time analysis into its cloud-native location intelligence platform.

CARTO is one of the fastest-growing names in location intelligence, used by modern analytics teams to enrich, analyse, and operationalise spatial data at scale. Known for its flexible architecture and strong adoption among data-driven organisations, CARTO is increasingly being chosen as a modern alternative to legacy GIS tools.

With this launch, CARTO customers can now generate TravelTime H3 isochrones directly within the CARTO platform, unlocking new capabilities for trade-area analysis, territory planning, and accessibility modelling at scale.

"We are excited to bring TravelTime H3 to the CARTO platform. As spatial analytics teams face increasingly complex demands across millions of data points, the need for scalable, high-performance tools is critical."

Charlie Davies

CEO & Co-Founder, TravelTime

How CARTO Is Using TravelTime H3

Analytics teams are moving away from asking simple questions like, "Is this customer within a 30-minute drive of our branch?" to more nuanced and complex questions like, "How far is this customer from each branch?" or "How much do our branch catchment areas overlap, and where might this lead to cannibalisation?"

These questions place new demands on spatial analytics teams, especially when the analysis needs to scale across thousands or even millions of locations. To solve this, CARTO introduced H3-based isochrones powered by TravelTime.

Instead of returning a traditional polygon boundary, TravelTime H3 returns journey time information indexed to H3 cells, using any mode of transit. This makes travel time results easier to query, enrich, and analyse across large datasets — while preserving real-world accuracy and performance.

Charlie Davies, TravelTime CEO and Co-Founder, says "As spatial analytics teams face increasingly complex demands across millions of data points, the need for scalable, high-performance tools is critical. TravelTime was engineered to provide uncompromising accuracy at any scale, and we are proud to partner with CARTO, a team that shares our commitment to pushing the boundaries of what is possible in location intelligence."

Why This Matters

TravelTime H3-based isochrones unlock a faster, more scalable approach to spatial analysis and location intelligence.

More than a traditional catchment area or boundary, TravelTime H3 delivers a level of detail that regular isochrones often miss. With H3, travel times are calculated for every H3 cell within a time boundary using any mode of transport: walking, driving, biking, or public transit. But the impact for H3 users goes far beyond flexibility and detail.

CARTO customers report a 96–99% reduction in processing time across data preparation, spatial joins, and enrichment — without sacrificing accuracy. They highlight three core benefits:

Consistency: H3 grids provide a standard unit for analysis, translating location insights globally across several resolutions, and removing the ambiguity of irregular shapes.

Fast, seamless joins: With TravelTime data already indexed to H3, joining it with other H3-indexed datasets, like demographics, human mobility, or financial data, is fast and simple even at huge scales.

Layering made simple: Each H3 cell is unique, making it easy to represent complex areas. Using simple SQL functions, you can quickly identify overlapping areas and gaps, making your data intuitive and insight-ready.

CARTO & TravelTime H3 Use Cases

TravelTime H3 helps answer real and increasingly complex, business questions with clarity at scale.

Network accessibility

H3 provides new perspectives on network accessibility. TravelTime journey time insights can be layered with other datasets to give clarity on the true accessibility of your network of locations, such as smart lockers, healthcare services, sports facilities, or restaurants.

CARTO and TravelTime H3 help answer key questions, and the opportunities for network improvements become clear:

• Which areas and populations are well-served by the network?
• Where are there provision gaps?
• How does this change when using different transport modes?
• How can we improve our coverage?

CARTO uses the example of a smart locker network to demonstrate how you can enrich population data within a 15-minute travel time, filtered by delivery partners, to give a straightforward view of how many people can realistically access each locker network.

Access saturation and expansion

Using CARTO and TravelTime H3 isochrones also allows you to understand density of your network and how well it serves your target populations and demographics. This helps you see where the network is saturated and where it has room to grow.

CARTO highlights that this broader view also makes it easier to plan for network overflow. For example, when assessing the smart locker network, if one locker fills up, you can quickly identify nearby alternatives that serve a similar customer base within comparable travel times. It also helps spotlight lockers with fewer delivery partnerships, pointing to smart, data-backed opportunities for expansion.

Territory planning

With TravelTime H3, territory planning becomes far more intuitive. By understanding the true accessibility of locations, territories, and key populations, teams can make smarter distribution decisions.

For example, CARTO and TravelTime H3 can be used to analyse how accessible a delivery depot is and how much of the population it serves. Armed with this knowledge, teams make smarter location decisions, resulting in better routing, more balanced territories, and a delivery network that scales efficiently as demand grows.

Get started with TravelTime H3 and CARTO

H3-based isochrones unlock accurate spatial analysis at scale.

By removing technical bottlenecks, they help teams scale to actionable insights faster and more efficiently. This means more time focused on what really matters.

We are proud to bring TravelTime H3 to the CARTO platform.

Read the full CARTO announcement here. Or chat to us about integrating the TravelTime API directly into your platform or product.