About our numbers
How we compute our numbers
Every distance, surface split, driving time and fare on this site comes from one road network model, checked by automated tests against published figures. Nothing is copied from a map app and nothing is guessed. This page says how it works, so you can judge the numbers rather than take our word for them.
The road network
We model Namibia's roads as a network of 49 places — towns, lodges areas, park gates and airports — joined by 62 road segments. Each segment carries its real length, its surface (tar or gravel) and the road that carries it, so the model can answer for any of the 2,352 ordered pairs of places: how far, on what, and how long.
Routes are chosen to minimise driving time, not distance, because that is what a working driver actually chooses. Where a gravel shortcut is shorter but slower than the tar the long way round, the model takes the tar — and so do our drivers.
The speeds behind every driving time
We plan tar at 100 km/h and gravel at 65 km/h, and add a 20-minute stop to every journey. These are deliberately not the speeds a map app assumes. They are the averages a careful driver sustains over a whole leg — including the slow passes, the corrugated stretches and the photo stop — and we tested faster gravel assumptions against published driving times before rejecting them: they predict arrivals nobody achieves.
Where fares come from
A fare is computed from what the journey costs to drive, not from what we think the market will bear. The inputs: the vehicle's running cost per kilometre, which is higher on gravel than on tar; the driver's time, including nights away on long routes; and the likelihood of finding a paying fare for the return leg rather than driving home empty — which is why the same road can price differently in each direction. The result is rounded up to the next N$50, never down, so rounding can never push a fare below what the drive costs.
The fare you see when you price a journey is the fare you pay. Prices are computed on our servers and recorded on your booking, so a later price change never rewrites what you agreed to.
How we check ourselves
An automated test suite compares the model's output against independently published figures for our curated routes, on every change to the code: distances must agree within 8% and driving times within 10%, or the change is rejected. Where the model disagrees with a published figure inside those bounds, we leave the disagreement visible and investigate it rather than tuning it away. Last verified September 2026.
What the model does not know
It has no live feed of road conditions. Gravel varies with grading cycles and rain, and a leg that is comfortable in the dry season can be slow or impassable after a storm — our times assume dry-season conditions. The model does know which passes and river crossings the January-to-March rains can close, and a booking over one of them in those months carries a note saying so — but that is structural knowledge, not today's state of the road. Roadworks, border queues and the actual weather stay outside it. Where any of that matters to a specific booking, a person checks, and we say so rather than let a model answer a question it cannot.
See it work
Pick any two places and the model answers with the distance, the surface split, the honest driving time and a fixed fare.
Questions about a figure on this site? Write to us and we will show our working — contact Namibia Transport.