R5: Rapid Realistic Routing on Real-world and Reimagined networks
A routing engine for multimodal transportation networks with realistic travel-time calculations, designed for accessibility analysis and scenario planning.
What is R5: Rapid Realistic Routing on Real-world and Reimagined networks?
R5 is a routing engine for multimodal transportation networks, built to power Conveyal's web-based scenario planning and accessibility analysis platform. It calculates realistic door-to-door travel times across multiple departure times, handling public transit, walking, biking, and car travel. The engine is specifically designed for one-to-many and many-to-many accessibility calculations used in transportation planning.
Transportation planners, researchers, and analysts working on accessibility studies, scenario planning, and land-use/transportation system evaluation. It is also used by students and collaborators seeking to understand or build upon Conveyal's methodology.
Developers choose R5 for its realistic routing methodology that better reflects real-world travel behavior, its high-performance calculations optimized for accessibility indicators, and its ability to compare transportation scenarios through lightweight network patches. It offers transparency and reproducibility for public planning processes.
Overview
Developed to power Conveyal's web-based interface for scenario planning and land-use/transport accessibility analysis, R5 is our routing engine for multimodal (transit/bike/walk/car) networks with a particular focus on public transit
Use Cases
Best For
- Calculating cumulative opportunities accessibility indicators for transportation networks
- Comparing transportation scenarios with patched OSM and GTFS data
- Modeling multimodal trips with realistic departure time variation
- Performing one-to-many and many-to-many travel-time computations
- Analyzing public transit accessibility with uncertainty characterization
- Integrating scheduled and headway-based transit lines in routing models
Not Ideal For
- Developers needing a simple, drop-in routing API for real-time, point-to-point trip planning in web or mobile apps
- Projects that require a stable, versioned SDK for long-term software integration without breaking changes
- Small teams or individuals without resources to set up and maintain a Java/MongoDB backend with complex configuration
- Use cases focused solely on single-departure-time routing without accessibility analysis or scenario comparison
Pros & Cons
Pros
Plans trips at many departure times within a window, better reflecting real-world travel behavior than single-timepoint routing, as emphasized in the README for accurate accessibility modeling.
Optimized for one-to-many and many-to-many travel-time computations, offering substantially better performance than repeated calls to older tools, which is key for cumulative opportunities indicators.
Supports lightweight patches to baseline OSM and GTFS networks for interactive scenario analysis, enabling rapid evaluation of transportation changes without rebuilding entire networks.
Uses novel methods to characterize variation and uncertainty in travel times, providing more robust insights for planning decisions, as highlighted in the methodology papers.
Cons
The README explicitly states that R5 does not expose a stable programming interface, and third-party projects may break with future releases, making it risky for independent integration.
Requires configuring MongoDB, Gradle, and properties files, with no streamlined installation process, which can be a barrier for those unfamiliar with Java ecosystems or transportation data.
Development is aligned with Conveyal's commercial roadmap, and technical support is not provided for third-party deployments, limiting flexibility and long-term sustainability for external users.
While academic papers are referenced, the README focuses on integration with Conveyal's service, leaving gaps for standalone use, such as detailed API documentation or community support channels.
Frequently Asked Questions
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