Posted on 04/07/2018 7:57:18 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
View the high resolution version of today’s graphic by clicking here.
The average person is awake for 15.5 hours per day, but once you subtract hours committed to work, eating, chores, personal care, and errands, there’s only so little much free time leftover.
That’s why the amount of time spent commuting, either in a car or via transit, can be a massive difference maker towards a person’s quality of life.
Throughout the United States, the average commute time works out to about 26 minutes one-way.
However, as today’s infographic from TitleMax shows, the average commute varies considerably between individual states, and also between major cities as well.
In South Dakota, a state with fewer than one million people, congestion is not a problem for most. The state is home to the shortest average commute in the country at just 16.6 minutes one-way.
Meanwhile, as you may imagine, New York is the polar opposite of South Dakota for getting to work. The Empire State has the longest average commute in the country, which is double the length at 33.6 minutes.
Every city is different, which means that data can have high amounts of variability within each state.
New York again is a great example for this: NYC has the longest average commute in the nation at 34.7 minutes, but go upstate and Buffalo actually has the shortest average commute for all major cities at 20.3 minutes per trip.
Here are the 10 shortest commutes in the country, for major cities:
| Rank | City | State or District | Avg. Commute (Mins) |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Buffalo | NY | 20.3 |
| #2 | Columbus | OH | 21.8 |
| #3 | Hartford | CT | 22.3 |
| #4 | Milwaukee | WI | 22.3 |
| #5 | Las Vegas | NV | 22.5 |
| #6 | Memphis | TN | 22.5 |
| #7 | Virginia Beach | VA | 22.6 |
| #8 | San Diego | CA | 23.0 |
| #9 | West Palm Beach | FL | 23.0 |
| #10 | Cincinnati | OH | 23.2 |
Many people living in places like Buffalo or San Diego are able to hop to their place of the work in 20 minutes or less, giving them a little extra flexibility with their free time in comparison to bigger cities in the country.
Here are the 10 longest commutes in the country, for major cities:
| Rank | City | State or District | Avg. Commute (Mins) |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | New York City | NY | 34.7 |
| #2 | Long Island | NY | 33.3 |
| #3 | Washington | DC | 32.8 |
| #4 | Newark | NJ | 31.1 |
| #5 | Chicago | IL | 30.8 |
| #6 | Boston | MA | 30.4 |
| #7 | Oakland | CA | 29.9 |
| #8 | Riverside-San Bernardino | CA | 29.8 |
| #9 | Baltimore | MD | 29.4 |
| #10 | Atlanta | GA | 29.2 |
While it’s surprising to see that Los Angeles didn’t make it onto the list of cities with ultra-long commutes, the largest city in California does have the distinction of being the most congested city in the world.
It’s there that citizens spend an unfortunate 104 hours each year stuck in traffic jams.
I worked with a company in Tulsa that had operations in Houston. I was heading up the compensation function. Our employment people were telling us that housing costs in Tulsa were way above those in Houston, when we tried to relocate employees. I posed a question - how long is their commute in Tulsa? 20 minutes. I told then to ask, what would you pay for a house in Houston if you had a 20 minute commute? It put things into perspective.
The average is misleading because the data are going to be skewed. The median gives you a better sense of commute times if you are going to break it down by each state.
I recall reading somewhere that the average speed on freeways in Los Angeles in about 1970 was about 65 mph and by about 1990, it had dropped to about 45 to 50 mph. Wonder if anyone here got to enjoy that kind of a change over those years and what it must be like nowadays?
I am a Long Islander. A huge number of us commute to Manhattan to work. That takes an average of an hour unless one is fortunate enough to live along the Port Washington line, which will then take half an hour.
“what would you pay for a house in Houston if you had a 20 minute commute? It put things into perspective.”
Very true. If you look at the cost of housing to be closer to jobs in the energy sector, it seems much higher even where businesses have relocated—Exxon to The Woodlands, and others to the energy corridor / City Center area. In the past, they were mostly downtown or in the Galleria area (except for refineries and some smaller exploration businesses scattered about).
The cost per square foot (for commercial properties at least) is now higher in City Center than in the Galleria area.
In fact, it was probably the executives of these companies thinking similarly to you that played a big role in their moving or expanding in other places. I know a lot of Exxon employees already chose to live in Spring and The Woodlands when the headquarters was in Greenspoint. They were willing to make a little longer commute rather than live in the closer neighborhoods. So relocating to The Woodlands made a lot of sense. And even for employees that bought homes in Katy, they now have the Grand Parkway for their commute.
Who the hell commutes less than one hour ?
This is all bullcrap
Thrn if you’re in sales the miles REALLY go up
Where is Houston? Takes an hour to get downtown on a good day.
I use to (before retirement) commute from Northeast Houston to West Houston. It would take me 55 minutes in the morning if I left at 5:00 am. It would take me 1 hour and 15 minutes in the evening to return home if I left work at 3:30 pm. The distance was 39 miles over limited access highways.
I question the samples used to establish commute times in this study. Miami, Fl is not even listed. I know Miami traffic is a mess.
It’s in Queens-——and that was covered by the NYC stat.
.
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Los Angeles does not make the list because most Angelenos live not hugely far from work in and around L.A; much of the work force for Los Angeles does not start-out from Los Angeles, but areas outside of Los Angeles both near and far.
For instance all the figures are averages and the figures for San Bernardino and Riverside have higher averages than they would otherwise, because although they are 60-70 miles east of L.A. many of the folks there commute into a L.A. and places near to L.A.
It would be more accurate if the commute times for places like L.A. were figured not just on the commute times of the residents thereof but also on the commute times of the workers going to and from a place for work, no matter where there commute starts from. It is unlikely that residents within San Bernardino or Riverside have commute times as high as the averages for those locations, for commuters commuter within those locations. The average is as high as reported for those locations due to the numbers of residents there commuting for an hour or more to L.A. and places near-around L.A. Those times would be telling a more truthful picture if they were part of the average commute time for L.A. (yes there are also other distant locations that residents of the “Inland Empire” - San Bernardino and Riverside commute to every day).
@23 The only way the commute is easier is when the illegals go on “strike” as they did twice.
Down on the MS Gulf coast, my last transit time was about 22 minutes for a 17 mile trip on surface roads - took about the same to use the interstate but added 4 miles to the trip - that was the afternoon rush hour route.
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