Travel is Kaer's map-first planner. Search a place, open Directions, compare local modes, schedule a departure, or choose Long trip for a door-to-door discovery plan.
Starting location
Travel asks for precise browser location only after permission is granted or you press the location control. A recent last-known fix appears immediately while a fresh fix is requested.
- Precise fixes are stored on this device for up to seven days.
- Approximate country/timezone fallbacks last up to 24 hours.
- A browser fix worse than 5 km is not persisted as precise history.
- A much poorer nearby fix cannot overwrite a recent accurate fix.
The cached location is a suggestion, not proof of where you are. Press the location control before a time-sensitive journey. Clear the site's local storage in your browser to remove local location and preference history.
Local routes
Drive, walk, cycle and public-transport modes share the same start and destination. Driving preferences cover tolls, ferries, major roads and known closures. The route response states which routing engine applied each constraint. If the fallback engine cannot enforce a preference, Travel shows a warning instead of claiming it was avoided.
Scheduled driving is converted to the origin's IANA timezone before it is sent to the routing engine. Road events with validity windows are evaluated at the planned departure time.
The nearby tray includes stops and stations, cafés, food, fuel, parking, hotels, pharmacies and groceries. Parking and hotel rows are place-directory results unless a provider explicitly adds live capacity, price, availability or reservation terms.
Road closures and traffic
The road layer can combine configured authority feeds with a worldwide OpenStreetMap fallback. Travel queries the plotted route corridor when it is safely bounded; large trips degrade to destination-area context.
Coverage language matters:
- Near real time is shown only for a configured healthy authority/regional feed.
- Long-term mapped works means the OpenStreetMap fallback.
- Partial or unavailable means the service could not verify the whole route.
- Predicted congestion is not labelled live traffic.
The production acquisition plan is to ingest Street Manager SNS, National Highways DATEX II and TfL disruptions in dedicated workers, retain raw source events, normalize temporal geometry in PostGIS, and serve cached corridor reads through Redis. The request-time fallback remains a resilience layer, not the future source of truth.
London charges and Dartford Crossing
Travel identifies when a mapped route intersects a charging area or crossing, then links the authority rather than deciding that payment is definitely due.
- TfL ULEZ: £12.50/day for a non-compliant eligible vehicle; use TfL's vehicle checker.
- TfL Low Emission Zone: applies to affected heavier vehicles and depends on class/emissions.
- TfL Congestion Charge: £18 when paid in advance/on the day, or £21 within three days, from 2 January 2026.
- GOV.UK Dart Charge: cars are £3.50 one-off or £2.80 pre-pay; pay by midnight the day after crossing. Charging hours are 06:00–22:00.
These records were checked against the linked authority pages on 29 July 2026. Always use the official checker/payment service for the date and vehicle concerned; exemptions, discounts and scheme rules can change.
Long trips, flights and stays
Long trip produces a discovery plan with ground legs, time zones, cost/emissions ranges and an estimated flight leg when appropriate. Estimated legs never invent a carrier or flight number.
The Fares & booking section separates:
- live shopping offers from a configured GDS;
- cached market fares;
- route-and-date-bound structured public web snapshots; and
- curated hand-off links to flight search providers.
Fare data is not operational flight status. Confirm schedules, terminals, baggage, delays, cancellation terms and final price with the airline before travel.
Search snippets and undated structured records are never promoted into flight offers. External booking links use exact provider hosts and expected booking paths.
Hotels are nearby directory suggestions with an external search hand-off. They do not currently include room availability, taxes, occupancy, cancellation terms or a reservation attached to the saved route. Parking likewise does not yet guarantee space, height clearance, tariffs or booking.
Saved routes and current limits
Saved routes keep the current plan snapshot so it can be reopened. They are not yet structured travel records with attached bookings, disruption subscriptions, return legs or automatic revalidation.
Travel is planning-grade rather than active navigation: it previews steps but does not currently provide continuous tracking, spoken turn-by-turn guidance or automatic rerouting.