Halfway Point Calculator

Quick answer: type where each of you starts and the tool finds the halfway point between them, then the town to meet in and how far each of you travels. New York City and Boston meet in Middletown, CT, 92 and 99 miles away as the crow flies; Seattle and Portland in Chehalis, WA; Atlanta and Nashville in Chattanooga, TN.

How to use it

Type the first starting place and pick it from the list (add the state or country after a comma to narrow it: “Portland, ME”), then the second. For a group, add up to three more. The answer is the town to meet in, each person’s distance to it, the exact midpoint with a link to see it on a map, directions from each of you, the other towns near the middle, and any Travel Magma guides close by. Switch between miles and kilometres at the top. The places are in the page’s address, so Copy link sends the others exactly this answer.

How the halfway point is worked out

The halfway point of two or more places is their geographic midpoint: each place is taken as a point on the globe, the points are averaged, and the average is brought back to the surface. That is the same point whichever way round you enter them, and it is not the average of the latitudes and longitudes, which goes wrong on long trips: the midpoint of New York City and Tokyo is in Alaska, at about 69.7° N, 153.7° W, while averaging the numbers would put it in Turkey. Distances are straight lines over the Earth’s surface (“as the crow flies”), on a sphere of 6,371 km, the Earth’s mean radius.

The town to meet in is the biggest town within a tenth of the trip of the midpoint, because a town with somewhere to eat beats a hamlet a mile nearer. When no town is that close, and always for three or more people, it is the town whose farthest traveller has the shortest trip, so nobody is left with the long drive. A starting place is never the meeting place, and when no town on the list lies near the middle the tool says so and shows the midpoint on a map instead of inventing one.

Where to meet, for the pairs people ask about most

Straight-line distances. The road between the two is longer, and the town nearest the middle of the road is often a different one: Dallas and Houston share Interstate 45, which passes west of Crockett.

Worked examples

• A weekend between New York City and Washington, DC: the midpoint is 4.5 miles from Wilmington, DE, the biggest town that close to it. New York City is 105 miles away and Washington 99. The train from New York to DC stops in Wilmington.
• Three friends in Miami, Atlanta and Dallas: the town whose farthest friend travels least is Pensacola, FL: 535, 283 and 587 miles. The midpoint itself is inland, near the Alabama line, with no bigger town nearer the three.
• Seattle and Portland: Chehalis, WA, 72 and 80 miles. If you would rather take the train, see Portland to Seattle by train.
• Rome and Florence: outside the US and Canada the list holds cities of 150,000 or more, and none lies between the two. The tool says so and opens the midpoint, in southern Tuscany, on the map, rather than sending one of you to the other’s city.

Common mistakes

• Averaging the latitudes and longitudes. It works for two nearby towns and fails on long trips, and it gives a different answer depending on which way round the map you go.
• Taking the straight-line midpoint for the driving midpoint. A lake, a mountain range or a coast can put the halfway point of the road somewhere else: open the directions from each of you before you book.
• Meeting at the exact midpoint. It is often a field; the tool names a town near it, and the others around it.
• Forgetting the time. Equal miles are not equal hours when one of you starts in a city and the other on the open highway.

Plan the trip

For the drive, see whether it is worth the drive from Key Largo to Key West, and for the bus, Jacksonville to Orlando by bus. Price the drive with the road trip cost calculator in our free travel tools.