Before trains were introduced in Germany, distance was often given in time it takes to walk (Wegstunde, lit. "way hour"). Early trains even advertised how many hours you can cover in mere minutes. People then probably realised how silly that sounds when more and more train lines where built and dropped that in favour of distance.
Then I guess Germany has not yet developed. But when talking about places people always specify the distance. Berlin is 584 km away from Munich, not 5 hours and 15 minutes. Talking about time to destination is something I have exclusively seen Americans do. Maybe that's because in the US distance and time are basically the same, since everybody takes the car and drives at the speed limit. But in Germany there is no general speed limit, and you might also decide to take the train or airplane to Berlin (and may people do) at which point talking about time would be confusing at best.