# Tableau Drive Time Selection: How It Works

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2026-07-10
- **Format:** Video · 4 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation, Analytics, Spatial
- **Tools:** Tableau
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-drive-time-selection-how-it-works
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMZ8EubK7fg

I'm testing Tableau's new drive-time selection tool alongside the existing buffer selection capability, using the 2015 New York tree census dataset, which contains over 683,000 marks. The drive time tool (shortcut letter T) lets you drag a selection on a map, and it calculates the shortest route and drive time radius in real time, something I haven't seen in any other BI tool.

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-drive-time-selection-how-it-works

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena