Which Cities And States Have The Longest Commutes?

Americans spend more than 100 hours commuting to work each year, according to American Community Survey (ACS) data released the U.S. Census Bureau. This exceeds the two weeks of vacation time (80 hours) frequently taken by workers over the course of a year. For the nation as a whole, the average daily commute to work lasted about 24.3 minutes in 2003.

...Based on a ranking of states with the longest average commute-to-work times, the ACS showed that New York (30.4 minutes) and Maryland (30.2 minutes) residents spent the most time traveling to their jobs. New Jersey (28.5 minutes), Illinois (27.0 minutes) and California (26.5 minutes) were also among states with some of the longest one-way commute times.

In a ranking of large cities (with populations of 250,000 or more), New York (38.3 minutes); Chicago (33.2 minutes); Newark, N.J. (31.5 minutes); Riverside, Calif. (31.2 minutes); Philadelphia (29.4 minutes); and Los Angeles (29.0 minutes) had among the nation’s highest average commute times. Among the 10 cities with the highest average commuting times, New York and Baltimore lay claim to having the highest percentage of people with “extreme” commutes; 5.6 percent of their commuters spent 90 or more minutes getting to work. People with extreme commutes were also heavily concentrated in Newark, N.J. (5.2 percent); Riverside, Calif. (5.0 percent); Los Angeles (3.0 percent); Philadelphia (2.9 percent); and Chicago (2.5 percent). Nationally, just 2.0 percent of workers faced extreme commutes to their jobs.

Thanks to Chris Steins