As of January 1, 2025, Applied Spatial Technology (AST) will formally become a division of Applied Geographic Solutions after many years of operations as a sister company. The AST division of AGS will continue to enhance the Freeway drive time system, which will be the first of a series of analytical plug-ins to be developed over the next several years.

With this acquisition, the evolution of Freeway comes full circle. Applied Geographic Solutions was founded in the spring of 1996, and our first product was Freeway. Freeway was truly a pioneering product – the very first system that could generate a trade area based on drive time and drive distance. The needs of our demographics models soon took priority over the Freeway system, and we partnered with Don Segal of Spatial Insights in 2007 to maintain the database and promote sales.

In recent years, we completely redesigned the underlying Freeway engine, resulting in dramatic performance improvements. At the same time, we expanded coverage from a North American focus to a global focus. For several years now, Freeway has been available in both a desktop and API form, with the API developed and maintained by AGS.

Most recently, the Freeway API was migrated onto the core AGS server, resulting in significant performance improvement and greater stability and integration with our Snapshot demographic reporting API.

Freeway is currently offered in several forms –

  • the Freeway API produces drive time or drive distance polygons in several formats, including geojson.
  • as an integrated component of the Snapshot demographic reporting API, allowing site reports based on drive times rather than radius rings.
  • as a Windows application with a simple to use interface.
  • as a Windows command line program for advanced users or integration with other Windows or internet based applications.

Over the coming months, we will be releasing the 2025 global and North American databases, as well as making enhancements affecting both performance and features.