The global properties of the finiteness and continuity of the Lorentzian distance

It is well-known that global hyperbolicity implies that the Lorentzian distance is finite and continuous. By carefully analysing the causes of discontinuity of the Lorentzian distance, we show that in most other respects the finiteness and continuity of the Lorentzian distance is independent of the causal structure. The proof of these results relies on the properties of a class of generalised time functions introduced by the authors in cite{RennieWhale2016}.