Data study
US Cities With the Longest and Shortest Commutes (2025)
The typical American commute is 26.8 minutes. We ranked the cities far above and far below it — from 14-minute Plains towns to 42-minute metro suburbs — and dug into why the gap is so wide.
Key takeaways
- The national average one-way commute is 26.8 minutes (U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2023).
- Shortest commutes are in mid-size Plains and Mountain West cities — Wichita Falls, Dubuque, Fargo, and Bismarck all sit near 14–16 minutes.
- Longest commutes ring big, expensive metros: nine of the worst 15 are in California, led by Antioch (42 min); New York City is second at 40.3.
- The pattern is about geography and housing cost, not city size — affordable outer suburbs pay for cheaper homes in time.
Commute time is one of the clearest quality-of-life differences between American cities — and it barely tracks with size or fame. The shortest commutes belong to mid-size metros most people never think about; the longest belong to the affordable edges of the country’s biggest job markets. We scored every city on an absolute 0–100 Commute Score (higher = shorter trip), built from the Census Bureau’s average travel-time data, and benchmarked each against the national mean of 26.8 minutes. The spread runs from 14-minute towns to 42-minute suburbs.
The shortest commutes in America
| City | Commute Score | Avg. commute |
|---|---|---|
| Wichita Falls, TX | 91 | 14.3 min |
| Dubuque, IA | 91 | 14.6 min |
| Grand Forks, ND | 90 | 14.8 min |
| Champaign, IL | 90 | 14.9 min |
| Great Falls, MT | 90 | 14.9 min |
| Logan, UT | 89 | 15.2 min |
| Fargo, ND | 88 | 15.5 min |
| Bismarck, ND | 88 | 15.6 min |
| Bozeman, MT | 88 | 15.5 min |
| Cheyenne, WY | 87 | 16.0 min |
These are compact job markets where home and work sit close together. A worker in Wichita Falls or Dubuque averages roughly half the national commute — about 14 minutes versus 26.8. The list is dominated by the Plains and Mountain West (North Dakota places three cities in the top eight), where smaller populations, abundant land, and limited congestion keep trips short. College towns like Champaign, Logan, and Bozeman repeat the pattern: campus, hospital, and downtown sit within a few miles of most homes.
The longest commutes in America
The longest commutes ring the country’s biggest, priciest metros. Nine of the 15 worst are in California — Antioch, Palmdale, Moreno Valley, Corona, Vallejo, Santa Clarita, and Fontana among them — all affordable outer suburbs of the Bay Area or Greater Los Angeles. New York City (40.3 min) and Chicago (33.1 min) round out the top tier, but for a different reason: their long averages reflect density and transit ridership, not long driving distances.
Why short-commute cities win
The common thread among the quickest cities is compactness. They have real job markets — tens of thousands of workers — but without the sprawl that turns a 10-mile trip into a 40-minute slog. Jobs cluster near where people live, road networks are uncongested, and there’s no expensive urban core forcing workers to the exurbs. The result is a daily commute that gives residents back the better part of an hour every day.
Why long-commute cities lose
The longest-commute cities are almost all bedroom communities — places people moved to for a house they could afford, accepting a long trip to a job center elsewhere. It’s the “drive till you qualify” trade: Antioch sits at the far edge of the Bay Area, Palmdale beyond the mountains north of Los Angeles, Lehigh Acres outside Fort Myers. New York is the exception that proves a different rule — its commuters aren’t driving far, they’re packed onto trains and subways into the densest job center in the country.
Does remote work change the picture?
Somewhat — but less than you’d think. National work-from-home settled around 13.8% in 2023, down from its 2021 peak, and it’s concentrated in affluent tech-adjacent suburbs rather than the long-commute exurbs. For most workers in Antioch or Palmdale, the drive is still the drive. See where remote work actually clusters in our study of the cities where the most people work from home.
Curious where your city lands? Every CensusFlow city page shows its Commute Score, average travel time, and an interactive map of where residents actually work.