Economy

New York City Has Worst Commute Time, Buffalo the Best

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: March 3, 2016 6:46 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 12:26 pm

The largest city in the United States has the longest commute time. A rapidly shrinking city has the shortest, according to housing site Trulia.

The average compute time in New York City is 34.7 minutes. Two cities among the top 10 in commute time are close by. The commute in Long Island is 33.0 minutes, which puts it in second place on the list. The commute in Newark, N.J., is 31.1 minutes, which places it fourth. The balance of the top 10 are also large cities: Washington at 32.8 minutes, Chicago at 30.8 minutes, Boston at 30.4 minutes, Oakland at 29.9 minutes, Riverside-San Bernardino at 29.8 minutes, Baltimore at 29.4 minutes and Atlanta at 29.2 minutes.

Buffalo is at the other end of the spectrum. Commute time to the city is 20.3 minutes. Whether or not it is related, the city has lost much of its population since the 1960s. The city with the second shortest commute has a large population of students. Columbus has a commute time of 21.8 million. After that, Milwaukee’s commute time is 22.3 minutes, followed by Hartford and Memphis at 22.5 minutes, Virginia Beach at 22.6 minutes, West Palm Beach at 23.0 minutes, San Diego at 23.0 minutes as well, and Cincinnati at 23.2 minutes.

Methodology:

Trulia’s U.S. population survey was conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of Trulia from November 19-23, 2015 among 2,016 adults ages 18 and older. The online survey is not based on probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables, please contact [email protected]

Survey data was filtered so that only those with full- or part-time jobs were included. In addition, data on millennials included only those who are current renters as of the survey date or those who responded as willing to move into a rental home within the next 12 months as of the survey date. Survey data came with weights for each observation so as to enable us to accurately represent characteristics of the U.S. population.

For the rest of the analysis, 2014 American Community Survey (ACS) data was used. Observations that were heads-of-households, 18 or older, and also employed were used to compute statistics. Certain metro areas with sample size issues were excluded. These metro areas were as follows: Philadelphia, Montgomery County, Pa., Camden, N.J., Kansas City, Mo., Louisville, Ky., Nashville, Tenn., New Orleans and Oklahoma City.