Cities Where Commuting Is a Nightmare

These are just a couple of the data points from a recent study titled “Commuting to Work in the 30 Largest U.S. Cities” by Michael Sivak at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute. The study used data from the 2013 American Community Survey (ACS), published by the U.S. Census Bureau.

A similar study by New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer put New Yorkers’ average weekly commute time a 6 hours and 18 minutes a week. That works out to nearly 76 minutes a day or a one way commute of 38 minutes. This study also used 2013 ACS data, as well as 1990 and 2000 Census data.

Want to walk to work? The best place for that is Boston, where 14.5% of commuters walk to work. The worst place for walking is Fort Worth, where just 1.2% walk to work.

Want to ride a bike? That would be best in Portland, where 5.9% of commuters bicycle to work, and worst in El Paso, where just 0.1% of commuters ride their bikes to work.

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The cities with the most people working from home are Austin and Portland, where 7.1% travel from the bedroom to the kitchen (for coffee) to the home office. The city with the fewest people working from home is Memphis, where just 2.1% work from home.

Only 21.4% of New York City commuters are solo drivers, compared with 82.9% in Louisville. And just 4.9% of New Yorkers carpool, compared with 12.4% of commuters in Memphis.

Here is a list of the 10 cities with the longest weekly commuting time (in hours and minutes), according to Comptroller Stringer’s study:

1. New York City: 6.18
2. Chicago: 5.25
3. Philadelphia: 5.01
4. San Francisco: 4.57
5. Baltimore: 4.51
6. Washington D.C.: 4.49
7. Boston: 4.43
8. Los Angeles: 4.38
9. Houston: 4.33
10. Fort Worth: 4.18

The New York study also reported that lower-wage workers typically have the longest commutes. And New Yorkers spend more time (an average of 49 hours and 8 minutes) per week working and commuting, more than an hour more than second-place Chicago, where working and commuting eat up 48 hours of every week.

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New Yorkers, on average, earn 16% more than an average full-time worker in any of the other 29 largest U.S. cities, but adding in commute time cuts that premium to 11%.