Study

New Yorkers have the longest commutes in the country

Here are the top 10 states with the longest commutes, according to Energy.gov data

Apr 16th 2024 at 2:30PM

It doesn’t matter how much you love driving or how nice your car is, commuting often sucks. Nobody wants to spend hours of their life sitting in stop-and-go traffic on the way to work, only to have to do the same thing again eight or more hours later. Commuters in some states have it way worse than others, however, as this week’s Energy.gov Fact of the Week shows. New York drivers top the list for the longest commute time in the U.S. 

Drivers in New York, Maryland, and New Jersey had the longest commute times as reflected in data gathered in 2022, with New Yorkers averaging 33.2 minutes one way and the other two averaging more than half an hour.

Top 10 states with the longest commute times:

  1. New York
  2. Maryland
  3. New Jersey
  4. District of Columbia
  5. Massachusetts
  6. California
  7. Illinois
  8. Georgia
  9. Virginia
  10. Florida

These states beat the national average of 27 minutes, sometimes by a considerable margin, but remember that averages tend to favor the most prominent members of a given data set. States like New York, where one or two metro areas hold the vast majority of the population, tend to be a bit skewed because of the numbers coming from the major urban centers.

It's also important to look further down on the list, as rural states like Maine and Indiana have longer commutes because of the extreme distances between places. Here in Maine, it’s easy to spend upwards of an hour commuting to Portland (our largest “city,” where all the jobs are), even when there is little to no traffic on the way.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, people in South and North Dakota spend the least amount of time commuting, and you can learn more about states with the best commute times here. Both average less than 18 minutes of commute time, followed closely by Wyoming, Montana, and Nebraska. It’s possible that in these areas, people live and work in the same small town, and the relatively low population density across the state makes it easy to get around, even in the busier areas.

Here is the full chart of findings, taken from U.S. Census data:

Average one-way commute time by state:

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