Pandana
August 21, 2026 ยท View on GitHub
Pandana
Pandana is a Python library for network analysis that uses contraction hierarchies to calculate super-fast travel accessibility metrics and shortest paths. The numerical code is in C++.
Project scope
Status: LTS / Compatibility
Mission: Pandana provides the established UDST network-accessibility and shortest-path API for existing applications and users.
Architecture: Pandana retains its established CPU and native-code reference execution architecture as part of its compatibility mission. Architectural rewrites are outside normal LTS maintenance and require broader scope review.
The project focuses on:
- compatibility with supported Python and scientific Python releases;
- reliable installation and binary packaging;
- correctness and security fixes;
- preservation of established Pandana APIs and behavior; and
- documentation needed to support existing applications.
Pandana is maintained as a stable compatibility library within UDST. Continuing development of general-purpose network accessibility functionality takes place in Pandarm.
Changes that improve reliability, compatibility, and maintainability are welcome within this mission and architecture. Material changes to the project's mission or execution architecture are considered through UDST's organization-level governance process.
See the UDST Project Directory for organization-wide project status and policy.
New in v0.8 is support for current versions of Python (3.10 to 3.14), NumPy 2, and Pandas 3, with binary installers for all platforms built and tested automatically.
New in v0.5 and v0.6 is vectorized, multi-threaded calculation of shortest path routes and distances: network.shortest_paths(), network.shortest_path_lengths().
Documentation: http://udst.github.io/pandana
Installation
Binary installers are provided for Mac, Linux, and Windows through both PyPI and Conda Forge.
pip install pandanaconda install pandana --channel conda-forge
Pandana v0.8 supports Python 3.10 to 3.14. The last version with Python 3.8 and 3.9 binaries is v0.7, and the last with Python 3.5 through 3.7 is v0.6.1.
See the documentation for information about other installation options.
Demo
Origins and acknowledgments
Pandana originated in research led by Paul Waddell at the University of California, Berkeley. Waddell conceived the network-accessibility application with Fletcher Foti, then his doctoral student and graduate student researcher, and Dennis Luxen of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and directed and funded the initial development.
Foti led implementation of the original Pandana software and its pandas-oriented interface. Luxen contributed contraction-hierarchy expertise and code developed through the Open Source Routing Machine project. Initial development was supported in part by National Science Foundation award IIS-0964412, for which Waddell was the UC Berkeley principal investigator, and by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.
Subsequent development has included major contributions from Matt Davis, Federico Fernandez, Sam Maurer, Joaquim Gromicho, Eli Knaap, and other community contributors. See the project history for additional context. The Git history remains the authoritative record of individual code contributions.
Academic literature
A paper on Pandana by Fletcher Foti, Paul Waddell, and Dennis Luxen was presented at the Transportation Research Board Conference on Innovations in Travel Modeling in 2012. Please cite this paper when referring to the methodology implemented by this library.