Example of using the Google API and {googleway} package to create time and distance matrices

google_dist_matrix.R

# google distance example
library(tidyverse)
library(googleway)

api_key <- "GET A GOOGLE API KEY"

## set up a data.frame of locations
## can also use 'lat/lon' coordinates as the origin/destination
df_locations <- data.frame(
  origin = c("Melbourne, Australia", "Sydney, Australia","Canberra, Australia")
  , destination = c("Sydney, Australia", "Brisbane, Australia","Wollongong, Australia")
  , stringsAsFactors = F
)

## loop over each pair of locations, and extract the polyline from the result
lst_distances <- apply(df_locations, 1, function(x){
  res <- google_distance(
    key = api_key,
    origin = x[['origin']],
    destination = x[['destination']])
  
  distance_m <- res$rows$elements[[1]]$distance$value
  duration_sec <- res$rows$elements[[1]]$duration$value
  df_result <- data.frame(
    origin = x[['origin']],
    destination = x[['destination']],
    distance_m = distance_m,
    duration_sec = duration_sec)
  # rownames(df_result) <- NULL
  return(df_result)
})

## convert the results to a data.frame
df_distances <- do.call(rbind, lst_distances)

## pivot to pairwise matrix of time
duration_matrix <- df_distances %>% 
  select(-distance_m) %>% 
  pivot_wider(names_from = destination,
              values_from = duration_sec)

## pivot to pairwise matrix of distance
distance_matrix <- df_distances %>% 
  select(-duration_sec) %>% 
  pivot_wider(names_from = destination,
              values_from = distance_m)