The Fair Halfway Plan

A meeting place fair by the minutes each of you drives, not by the map: each side's real detour and speed from a drive already made, the real place with the smallest gap, the fuel settled with one transfer, and a leave-by time for each of you

Our Midpoint Calculator finds the point half-way along the straight line between two places, and its own page says that point is not necessarily the middle by road or by journey time. Two people meeting there each drive their own roads at their own speed, so equal distance is unequal time. The Fair Halfway Plan finds the meeting place that is fair by the minutes each of you drives. In the worked example, two homes 123.26 miles apart in a straight line: at the map's midpoint one drive takes 1 h 43 min and the other 2 h 26 min with its rest break, 43 minutes longer each way, or 37.3 hours a year at the wheel for one person meeting every other week. Each side's detour factor and real door-to-door speed, measured from one drive already made, move the point to 56.1% of the line, where both drives take 1 h 55 min. Of three real places near it, the one nearest the dot leaves a 26-minute gap and another leaves 4. The fuel is settled with one transfer: $24.01 against $13.23 becomes $18.62 each. Every figure is computed by the code behind our calculators, and every home, drive, place and price is an example for you to replace; the 15% buffer is our rule of thumb. Drive times round up and leave-by times round down, and it quotes the UK Highway Code on rest breaks and on phones; it never asks anyone to drive faster or skip a break to make a meeting fair. Inside: seven steps, four printable working pages, reference tables and a quickstart, plus a personalised sheet worked from the numbers you enter in our Midpoint, Coordinate Distance, ETA and Fuel Cost calculators.

Look inside

Two full pages from the plan, exactly as printed. Click either to read it at full size before you decide.

What is in it

• The Map Midpoint Rule: both drives timed to the map's midpoint, and the gap in minutes and hours a year
• The Detour Factor Rule: road miles over straight-line miles, measured from a drive each of you has made
• The Clock Not Cruise Rule: your real door-to-door average speed, not the speed you cruise at
• The Equal Minutes Rule: the point along the line where both drives take the same time, breaks included
• The Smallest Gap Rule: three real places near the fair point, picked on the gap in minutes
• The One Transfer Rule: both round trips priced, and the fuel settled once in whole cents
• The Arrive Late, Leave Early Rule: leave-by times rounded earlier, one named time zone, breaks and phones
• Four printable working pages: two drivers card, fair point sheet, candidate places sheet, meetup log and settle-up
• Reference tables: the fair share by ratio, hours a year a gap costs, and the formulas
• A quickstart checklist and a personalised sheet worked from your own calculator inputs

The plan picks up where the free Midpoint Calculatorleaves off. The calculator finds the point half-way along the shortest line between two places, and its own page says that point is not necessarily the middle by road or by journey time. The plan finds a meeting place that is fair by the minutes each of you drives: each side's detour factor (road miles over the straight-line miles the Coordinate Distance Calculator gives) and real door-to-door speed, both measured from a drive you have already made, the point along the line where the two drives take the same time with rest breaks included, the real place near it with the smallest gap, the fuel settled with one transfer using the Fuel Cost Calculator, and a leave-by time for each of you from the ETA Calculator, rounded so nobody runs late. Every home, drive and price in it is an example. It quotes the UK Highway Code on rest breaks and phones, and it never asks anyone to drive faster or skip a break to make a meeting fair.