Your daily commute traffic differential

In My Humble Opinion
1

For those of you who drive to work:

Provided it is fairly regular, either coming or going, take the time of your average daily commute, door-to-door (A).

Take (or estimate) the time it would take without traffic, as if you were to make that same trip at like 500AM on a Saturday morning (B).

Subtract (B) from (A).
Myself, on a weekday it takes me roughly 50 minutes door to door. I work Saturdays, so I know that my “no traffic time” is 20 minutes, making my traffic differential 30 minutes. Traffic sucks!

What is yours?

2

Well…I actually do drive to work at 4am. It takes me eight minutes to get to work, 12 if I pick up my coworker. When I drive home around noon it takes maybe 15 min.

3

I go in at six and leave after six to avoid exactly that waste of time. But I rarely take work home, and never during the week: I will just work later and avoid traffic more.

Were I to go at peak times, it would stretch a 25 minute trip to 45-75 minutes each way.

4

I don’t drive into the office much anymore so I haven’t optimized the commute but it’s about 75 - 90 mins leaving around 7am. If I leave at 7:15 I can’t be certain I’ll arrive before 9am.

No traffic it’s about a 40 min drive so a differential of anywhere between 35 and 80 mins.

5

I have a long commute three days a week, 62 miles each way, 40 miles of country highway, 21 miles of interstate, and 1 mile of local surface streets.Because I have flex time, I leave my house at 5:15 AM and leave my office before 3:30 PM, avoiding the worst traffic. Driving to work takes me an average of 65 minutes, and the trip home takes 75 minutes. If I have to stay at work past 4 PM, it’s a 90 minute trip.

I work from home two days a week.

6

I commute by car and by bicycle.

In the car, I leave for work at 5am, it is 20 miles and it takes 30 minutes. Returning home takes about 40 minutes as long as nobody does something stupid and wracks up the highway.

On the bike, I leave for work at 4am, it is 22 miles and it takes an hour and a half. In the afternoons heading home, it is a solid two hours.

On Sunday morning, I could drive it in 25 minutes but cycling stays the same.

7

My 19 mile commute takes about 30 minutes in the morning and 25 in the evening; with no traffic, it would be 25 and 20, respectively, so traffic is costing me 5 minutes either way. I miss the 12 minute commute that I used to have, but I know that I have it much better than most people in my area.

(The difference between morning and evening is a result of “all left turns” on the non-highway portions in the morning, and “all right turns that can be taken on red” in the evening. That stacks up over the six lights where I need to make turns.)

8

I have a 13 mile commute, all on surface streets and traffic lights caus ethe biggest delays. It takes me 25-30 minutes on an average day, on a weekend, if I catch green lights most of the way it would take about 15-20 minutes.

TLDR, about 10 minutes differential.

9

Driving from Tysons Corner to Rockville/Gaithersburg. There is a fairly high standard deviation. Traffic on this route is very unpredictable.

No traffic: 22 minutes

AM:
Average: 32 minutes, delta: 10 minutes
Max: 46 minutes, delta: 24 minutes

PM:
Average: 38 minutes, delta: 16 minutes
Max: 1:00, delta 38 minutes

Driving down to DC (Union Station) has a bigger delta and about the same variability.

10

Going to work, time of day during the week does not matter. 2 lane county highway, mountain passes etc. I sometimes don’t even see another car for the first 10 miles (that would be before I reach a town)

In fact, it may take a little longer on weekends since I live in a ski resort county.

11

I work from 6:30am to 3pm with an 11 mile commute each way. It takes about 16 minutes to work and 17 minutes home. It might take a minute quicker if there was no traffic and I was speeding. So if anything, my differential would be based on how much of the law I were to break as I rarely dip below the speed limit.

That’s all based on Spring/Summer/Fall driving. Winter in the Twin Cities and my commute will be about 20 minutes on the average.

12

With no traffic it takes me about 25-30 minutes. On average it takes me about 50 minutes to an hour. Yes traffic in NJ sucks and is getting worse (my average gets longer every year).

13

There’s rarely that much traffic on my commute, so the time of day doesn’t matter. My drive is pretty much always right at 20 minutes.

What does matter are two things, one I can anticipate, and one I cannot:

I can anticipate game days. We have a prominent college football team just up the road from where I work, and my commute travels down the major artery feeding that college (and unfortunately has to cross it - left turns) for a small while. When a game is afoot, a segment of road that normally takes less than 5 minutes is extended to about 15, sometimes 20, depending on time of day and who is playing.

What I can’t really anticipate? Slow people.

I (and most other people around here) think of our single-lane, curving country highways as having defacto 60MPH speed limits. Obviously you have to slow down for intersections and blind curves and schools, but the majority of the road (regardless of the posted speed) can be driven at about 60, and that’s what most people do. It works quite well most days. However, on occasion there will be someone who either did not get the memo, or is driving something that is unable to perform to specs:

Tractors.

Oversize tractor-trailers pulling doublewide homes.

People in trucks held together with duct tape and string. (These are great, because usually there are bonus fumes, meaning when I get to work I am not only late, but have a nasty headache.)

Old people. They don’t have anywhere to be, so obviously neither does anyone else! Their reaction times are slowed, and so is their driving speed. Makes sense, but god it’s annoying.

Student drivers. I also have a highschool on my route, and depending on the date and time, will end up behind skittish colt drivers poking down the road at the massive intimidating speed of 20 mph while they get their sea legs. Again, totally understandable, but I have to get to work!

So, my differential is between 10 and 25 minutes, turning a 20 minute drive into a half hour or 45 minute one.

14

On Sunday at 4 am, the freeway is the fastest way; I think I could probably make it to work in 10-12 minutes at most.

However, due to construction and high traffic volumes at other times, until recently, it wasn’t the fastest route. In the past couple of weeks, the construction has advanced to the point where the freeway is competitive again.

I’d say that now I can go to work in about 15-20 minutes, and get back in 20-25 minutes if I took the freeway both directions.

So the going delta is between 3 to 8 minutes, and the coming home delta is 10-13 minutes.

15

Since we drop off and pick up our son at before/aftercare on our way to and from work, we don’t have a good fix on door-to-door time anymore.

Before parenthood, it was ~35-40 minutes under normal conditions. There were a couple times when I had to go home in the middle of the day for one reason or another. The traffic was pretty much at weekend levels, and it took ~30 minutes. So the weekday rush hour differential was on the order of 5-10 minutes.

16

Commute (about 2 miles each way) by bike. I go in very early so it is quick to get across the one light I have to cross (pressing the pedestrian button makes it change immediately that early in the morning). On the way home, it can be up to 2 minutes for that light to change. Both directions have about the same uphill (about 200’ - it is genuinely uphill both ways). So, 10 minutes in the morning and around 12 minutes on the way home. 2 minute differential.

17

Very little differential, as I live downtown and work in the 'burbs, thus going against the flow of traffic both ways.

18-20 minutes on a weekday; 16-18 on a weekend.

18

My differential is about 8 minutes. I live pretty close to my office, so 14 minutes on a workday, about six minutes on a non-work day.

19

Traffic differential: zero.
Commute time each way: 8 minutes.

20

I have a reverse commute that is almost all interstate highway the whole way. Almost everyone else goes the opposite way that I do. Time of day doesn’t make any difference except for the occasional accident or construction. It takes 28 minutes for 30 miles door to door.