A state average hides a lot. The average trip to work in the Riverside–San Bernardino metro area is 33.2 minutes, 4.5 more than California's statewide 28.7, and those minutes come out of the same day you'd train in. The Census Bureau measures it for metro areas too: its American Community Survey publishes the average travel time to work for each metropolitan area, and the share of workers who work from home instead.1
The table is the 40 metro areas that have a page on this site, from the 2020–2024 five-year estimates, with the Census Bureau's 90% margins of error. For every state and DC, see the state table.
The table
Minutes are the average trip to work, home to work, for workers who don't work from home. The work-from-home share is a percentage of all workers 16 and over who live in the metro area. The ± figure is the margin of error at 90%: two metros whose ranges overlap are not meaningfully different. Each metro links to its page on this site.
| Metro area | Average trip to work, minutes (± 90% MOE) | Work from home, % of workers (± 90% MOE) |
|---|---|---|
| Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Roswell, GA | 31.0 (±0.1) | 20.6% (±0.2) |
| Austin–Round Rock–San Marcos, TX | 27.3 (±0.2) | 26.8% (±0.4) |
| Baltimore–Columbia–Towson, MD | 29.4 (±0.2) | 18.2% (±0.3) |
| Birmingham, AL | 27.0 (±0.3) | 11.5% (±0.4) |
| Charlotte–Concord–Gastonia, NC-SC | 26.6 (±0.2) | 21.3% (±0.3) |
| Chicago–Naperville–Elgin, IL-IN | 30.3 (±0.1) | 17.7% (±0.2) |
| Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN | 24.7 (±0.2) | 14.5% (±0.3) |
| Cleveland, OH | 24.2 (±0.2) | 14.4% (±0.3) |
| Columbus, OH | 23.6 (±0.2) | 18.8% (±0.4) |
| Denver–Aurora–Centennial, CO | 27.0 (±0.2) | 23.9% (±0.3) |
| Grand Rapids–Wyoming–Kentwood, MI | 22.0 (±0.2) | 12.4% (±0.4) |
| Hartford–West Hartford–East Hartford, CT | 24.0 (±0.2) | 16.9% (±0.4) |
| Houston–Pasadena–The Woodlands, TX | 29.9 (±0.1) | 13.4% (±0.2) |
| Indianapolis–Carmel–Greenwood, IN | 25.5 (±0.2) | 15.6% (±0.4) |
| Jacksonville, FL | 26.0 (±0.2) | 17.6% (±0.5) |
| Kansas City, MO-KS | 23.2 (±0.2) | 16.9% (±0.3) |
| Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim, CA | 29.5 (±0.1) | 17.5% (±0.1) |
| Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN | 24.1 (±0.2) | 13.2% (±0.4) |
| Memphis, TN-MS-AR | 24.3 (±0.2) | 9.9% (±0.4) |
| Miami–Fort Lauderdale–West Palm Beach, FL | 29.3 (±0.1) | 14.5% (±0.2) |
| Milwaukee–Waukesha, WI | 22.7 (±0.2) | 15.2% (±0.3) |
| Minneapolis–St. Paul–Bloomington, MN-WI | 23.9 (±0.1) | 21.3% (±0.2) |
| Nashville–Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN | 27.8 (±0.2) | 18.2% (±0.4) |
| Oklahoma City, OK | 23.4 (±0.2) | 10.7% (±0.3) |
| Orlando–Kissimmee–Sanford, FL | 29.2 (±0.3) | 17.5% (±0.4) |
| Phoenix–Mesa–Chandler, AZ | 26.4 (±0.2) | 20.5% (±0.3) |
| Pittsburgh, PA | 25.8 (±0.2) | 17.5% (±0.3) |
| Portland–Vancouver–Hillsboro, OR-WA | 25.0 (±0.2) | 22.7% (±0.3) |
| Providence–Warwick, RI-MA | 26.6 (±0.2) | 12.4% (±0.4) |
| Raleigh–Cary, NC | 26.8 (±0.3) | 26.2% (±0.5) |
| Richmond, VA | 25.4 (±0.3) | 19.0% (±0.4) |
| Riverside–San Bernardino–Ontario, CA | 33.2 (±0.2) | 11.7% (±0.2) |
| Sacramento–Roseville–Folsom, CA | 27.1 (±0.3) | 19.9% (±0.4) |
| Salt Lake City–Murray, UT | 22.8 (±0.2) | 19.4% (±0.5) |
| San Antonio–New Braunfels, TX | 26.8 (±0.2) | 14.9% (±0.4) |
| San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara, CA | 26.6 (±0.2) | 23.5% (±0.4) |
| St. Louis, MO-IL | 24.9 (±0.2) | 15.5% (±0.3) |
| Tampa–St. Petersburg–Clearwater, FL | 28.3 (±0.2) | 20.1% (±0.3) |
| Virginia Beach–Chesapeake–Norfolk, VA-NC | 24.9 (±0.2) | 12.2% (±0.3) |
| Washington–Arlington–Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 32.4 (±0.1) | 25.4% (±0.2) |
Download this table (CSV). Free to reuse with a link back to this page.
What stands out
- Riverside–San Bernardino has the longest average trip: 33.2 minutes (±0.2), clear of Washington's 32.4 (±0.1), which is in turn clear of Atlanta's 31.0 (±0.1). Riverside–San Bernardino also has a low work-from-home share, 11.7%, well under the middle of the table: a long trip, and fewer people skipping it.
- Grand Rapids has the shortest: 22.0 minutes (±0.2), clear of the next two, Milwaukee (22.7) and Salt Lake City (22.8), whose ranges overlap each other. From Grand Rapids to Riverside–San Bernardino is a difference of 11.2 minutes a trip.
- Austin and Raleigh work from home the most: 26.8% (±0.4) and 26.2% (±0.5). Their ranges overlap, so neither is clearly first, but both are clear of the next, Washington (25.4%, ±0.2).
- Memphis works from home the least: 9.9% (±0.4), the only metro here under 10%, and clear of the next, Oklahoma City (10.7%, ±0.3). Austin's share is about 2.7 times Memphis's.
- A long commute and a home office can sit in the same metro. Washington has the second-longest average trip and the third-highest work-from-home share. The average describes the people who commute; a quarter of its workers don't.
How to read your own metro's row
Half the 40 metros average 26.4 minutes or less to work, and half have 17.5% or less of their workers at home. At the middle of the table, if the trip home takes as long as the trip in, that's close to 53 minutes a day getting to work and back.
The number is an average across everyone who commutes in the metro area, short trips and long ones together, so yours may be half of it or twice it. It's also a five-year estimate: survey answers from 2020 through 2024 taken together, so it describes those years, not this one. And a metro area is bigger than its first-named city: these are metropolitan statistical areas, built from whole counties around the core.
What it's good for is a reality check on your plan. If the average trip where you live is half an hour, a plan that assumes you'll get home early with energy to spare is a plan for someone else. Start from the hours your week really has.
Where training fits around a commute
If your commute is long
- Train before you leave, or near work. A session before the commute is one the day can't take from you; a gym near work turns part of the commute window into training. If you're choosing a slot, the best time is the one you can repeat.
- Make sessions shorter, not rarer. Two or three focused 30-minute sessions fit a long-commute week better than one long session you keep postponing.
- Put the longest session on a day without the commute. A weekend or a home day is where the full session goes.
- Count the commute only if you move in it. Walking or cycling part of the way is daily movement; sitting in traffic or on a train isn't, so plan your steps somewhere else.
If you work from home
- Your old commute is your training window. The minutes you'd spend getting to work are the easiest slot to protect: train at the hour you'd have left the house, or the hour you'd have come back.
- Walk a fake commute. A walk before you sit down and another when you stop gives the workday a start and an end, and puts a walk in it.
- Train at home if the gym trip is the obstacle. A three-day dumbbell plan needs no trip at all.
If your week changes from one week to the next (hybrid days, shifts, travel), coaching for a busy week is built for that.
Related tables: commute times by state (the same two figures for every state and DC), rain by metro for these same 40 metros, and how active your city is by the CDC's city estimates.
Where the numbers come from
Both columns come from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, 2020–2024 five-year estimates, table DP03, for each metropolitan statistical area as a whole: mean travel time to work in minutes for workers 16 and over who did not work from home (DP03_0025E, margin of error DP03_0025M), and the percent of workers 16 and over who worked from home (DP03_0024PE, margin DP03_0024PM). These are the Bureau's published values and 90% margins of error, not recalculated, rounded to one decimal.1
Each metro's figures were read from data.census.gov, the Census Bureau's own server, one metro at a time on October 22, 2026, and re-checked against the Bureau the same day by a second, independent fetch: every value and margin matched.
If you reuse the table, cite the U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020–2024 5-year estimates, table DP03; a link back here is appreciated. This page uses Census Bureau data but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.
If your commute is the reason your training keeps slipping, apply, and the plan starts from the week you actually have.
General education only, not medical advice. If you have a medical condition, are pregnant, or take medication, check with your doctor before changing how you train or eat.
Sources
- U.S. Census Bureau. American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2020-2024, table DP03 (ACSDP5Y2024.DP03): mean travel time to work (DP03_0025E/M) and worked from home (DP03_0024PE/PM), by metropolitan statistical area (310XX00US<CBSA>), 40 metro areas. U.S. Census Bureau, data.census.gov, 2026. https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDP5Y2024.DP03 (accessed October 22, 2026).