Alabama's average commute time: 24.1 minutes | News

How long does it take you to get to your job each day? A recently released survey from the U.S. Census Bureau says the average American spends 25 minutes and 18 seconds driving to work each day. Alabama's average is less than that by only about a minute, with Alabamian drivers spending an average of 24.1 minutes on a daily commute.  

The 2010 American Community Survey looked at commuting patterns from 2010 in areas that had 65,000 people or more.

“Travel time to work inched up for Alabamians for decades," Annette Watters, manager of the Alabama State Data Center at the University of Alabama said. “In 1980, the first time the census collected such information, Alabama’s average travel time to work was 21.6 minutes, then increased to just over 24 minutes in 2000, where it remained in 2010.”

Watters noted the following information that came out of the survey:

• In 2010, workers were less likely to carpool than they were in 2000. In 2000, 12.3 percent of Alabama’s workers carpooled. By 2010, it was only 9.0 percent.
• Alabamians love to drive themselves to work, one worker per car. Nearly 77 percent of all American workers drive alone to work, but 85 percent of Alabamians are cruising to work every day with nobody else in the car, truck or van.
• Public transportation is Alabama’s least favorite way to get to work. Less than one half of one percent of workers in Alabama use public transportation (excluding taxicab).The national average is about 5 percent. The New York, San Francisco and Washington DC metro areas have the highest percentages of workers using public transportation to get to their jobs.
• Travel time to work is longer, on average, if you live in one of Alabama’s rural areas than if you live in a metro or micropolitan area. Two exceptions to that generalization are the Birmingham-Hoover metropolitan area and the Daphne-Fairhope-Foley micropolitan area (Baldwin County). Many workers in those areas have longer commutes than the state or national averages. In 2010, workers who live in the Birmingham metro area needed 26 minutes to get to work, on average. Workers in Baldwin County needed 27.1 minutes.

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