Hale County Commute Time Map & Patterns

Commute Time Burden in Hale County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Hale County spend about 57 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 238 hours, about 9.9 full days, spent commuting. That is 29% more time on the road than the Alabama average of 22.1 minutes each way, a difference of 6.4 minutes.

Hale County holds about 0.3% of Alabama's population but accounts for roughly 0.4% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Hale County would save about 95 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,948 at the same national wage assumption used above.

Area	One-Way Commute	Daily Round-Trip	Yearly Time Spent	Estimated Yearly Cost	Local Road Traffic (VPD)
Hale County	28.5 min	57.1 min	238 hrs/yr	$7,370	319
Alabama	22.1 min	44.3 min	184 hrs/yr	$5,717	1,193
United States	22.4 min	44.8 min	187 hrs/yr	$5,790	1,355

The estimated yearly cost applies a single national rule of thumb (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics average hourly earnings), not a measurement of wages in this area - treat it as a rough estimate, not a paycheck figure. Local road traffic counts, vehicles per day on non-highway roads, come from proprietary Ticon and TrafficZoom data.

Commute Time Map: Alabama Counties

Compare commute times among different counties

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On average, it takes 28.5 minutes to get to work in Hale County. That's 27% longer than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

Slower than 83% of counties in Alabama

The most common departure window is 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM, followed by 06:00 AM – 06:29 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 2.2% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Hale County

• Car: 95.8%
• Worked at Home: 2.2% unusually low
• Walked: 1.0%
• Public Transportation: 0.3%
• Motorcycle: 0.3%
• Taxi: 0.3% unusually high
• Bicycle: < 0.1% unusually low
• Other: < 0.1%

Taking a taxi is unusually common in Hale County: 3.6 times more than the Alabama average (0.3% vs 0.1%).

Working from home is unusually rare in Hale County: 4.0 times less than the Alabama average (2.2% vs 8.8%).

Biking is essentially absent in Hale County, versus 0.1% in Alabama.

Commute Mode Trends in Hale County, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Hale County get to work, as a share of all workers aged 16 and over, across 16 U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) releases from 2009 to 2024. Each release is a 5-year estimate: the 2024 figures cover surveys taken from 2020 to 2024. Because neighboring releases share most of their survey years, the lines move gradually, and a sudden change such as the rise of remote work in 2020 spreads across several releases. Hover over or tap a line to highlight it, and use the legend to show or hide a mode. Driving starts hidden so the smaller modes stay readable.

• Car
• Worked at Home
• Walked
• Public Transportation
• Taxi
• Motorcycle
• Bicycle
• Other

Show commute mode data by year

Year	Car	Worked at Home	Walked	Public Transportation	Taxi	Motorcycle	Bicycle	Other
2009	93.6%	2.6%	1.9%	0.7%	0.0%	0.0%	0.3%	0.8%
2010	94.0%	2.6%	2.0%	0.5%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%	0.7%
2011	94.5%	2.5%	2.1%	0.2%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%	0.6%
2012	95.4%	1.4%	2.5%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%	0.6%
2013	94.7%	1.2%	3.2%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.3%	0.6%
2014	97.1%	1.0%	0.4%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.4%	1.1%
2015	97.0%	1.2%	0.3%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.2%	1.3%
2016	96.1%	1.8%	0.6%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.2%	1.3%
2017	96.3%	1.9%	0.3%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.2%	1.2%
2018	95.5%	3.1%	0.2%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	1.1%
2019	96.1%	2.9%	0.2%	0.2%	0.0%	0.1%	0.0%	0.4%
2020	97.1%	2.0%	0.3%	0.1%	0.0%	0.1%	0.0%	0.4%
2021	97.0%	2.2%	0.0%	0.2%	0.0%	0.1%	0.0%	0.4%
2022	96.3%	2.4%	0.1%	0.4%	0.0%	0.3%	0.0%	0.5%
2023	96.6%	2.0%	0.9%	0.3%	0.0%	0.2%	0.0%	0.0%
2024	95.8%	2.2%	1.0%	0.3%	0.3%	0.3%	0.0%	0.0%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share peaked in 2014 at 97.1%. Overall it rose from 93.6% in 2009 to 95.8% in 2024, up 2.2 percentage points. It has fallen in the latest release.

Walking lost the most ground, falling from 1.9% to 1.0% of workers (down 0.9 percentage points).

Commute Start Times in Hale County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Hale County?

The bars show when commuters in Hale County leave home for work, as a share of everyone who commutes (people who work from home are not counted), from the 2024 ACS 5-year estimates. The thin violet marks show Alabama for comparison. Hover over or tap a row for the exact numbers.

12:00-4:59 AM	12:00-4:59 AM Hale County6.3% Alabama6.8%	6.3%
5:00-5:29 AM	5:00-5:29 AM Hale County1.5% Alabama5.1%	1.5%
5:30-5:59 AM	5:30-5:59 AM Hale County8.1% Alabama5.9%	8.1%
6:00-6:29 AM	6:00-6:29 AM Hale County11.5% Alabama9.9%	11.5%
6:30-6:59 AM	6:30-6:59 AM Hale County9.9% Alabama11.3%	9.9%
7:00-7:29 AM	7:00-7:29 AM Hale County14.4% Alabama16.8%	14.4%
7:30-7:59 AM	7:30-7:59 AM Hale County11.0% Alabama11.8%	11.0%
8:00-8:29 AM	8:00-8:29 AM Hale County11.1% Alabama8.6%	11.1%
8:30-8:59 AM	8:30-8:59 AM Hale County2.2% Alabama3.5%	2.2%
9:00-9:59 AM	9:00-9:59 AM Hale County5.4% Alabama4.6%	5.4%
10:00-10:59 AM	10:00-10:59 AM Hale County2.0% Alabama2.2%	2.0%
11:00-11:59 AM	11:00-11:59 AM Hale County0.8% Alabama1.0%	0.8%
12:00-3:59 PM	12:00-3:59 PM Hale County7.2% Alabama6.3%	7.2%
4:00-11:59 PM	4:00-11:59 PM Hale County8.7% Alabama6.2%	8.7%

Hale County Alabama Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Hale County is 7:00-7:29 AM, when 14.4% of commuters leave home, compared with 16.8% across Alabama. Early starts are less common than in Alabama: 15.8% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 17.9% there. The morning rush is more spread out than in Alabama: 46.4% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 48.6% there. About 1 in 4 commuters (24.0%) leave at 9 AM or later, which usually points to shift work, flexible hours or part-time jobs.

When people leave matters as much as how far they go. Rush-hour traffic shrinks how much ground a 20-minute trip covers, so a trade area drawn as a simple circle often takes in neighborhoods that customers or staff would never drive from and misses others that are an easy trip. A drive-time zone, also called an isochrone, outlines every place within a set number of minutes of an address, which makes it the more honest way to size a store's catchment, a hiring area or the commute from a new home.

See it for yourself on the interactive map: click any spot in Hale County, pick a 5, 10, 15 or 30-minute drive and see the local demographics of the people who live within that exact drive time.

Is Hale County Waking Up Earlier? Typical Departure Time, 2009-2024

Each line follows the typical (median) departure time: the moment by which half of commuters have already left home. Higher on the chart means a later start. Setting Hale County next to Alabama and the U.S. shows whether local mornings are drifting earlier or later than everyone else's. The figures span 16 ACS 5-year releases, so changes build up gradually rather than jumping from one year to the next.

• Hale County
• Alabama
• United States

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Hale County	Alabama	United States
2009	7:13 AM	7:20 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:13 AM	7:20 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:12 AM	7:20 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:16 AM	7:20 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:14 AM	7:21 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:04 AM	7:21 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:09 AM	7:21 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:06 AM	7:21 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:07 AM	7:21 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:08 AM	7:20 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:13 AM	7:20 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:08 AM	7:20 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:07 AM	7:21 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:12 AM	7:20 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:23 AM	7:20 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:27 AM	7:19 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Hale County were on the road by 7:27 AM, 14 minutes later than in 2009 (7:13 AM). Across Alabama, the typical start barely moved over the same years. Commuters in Hale County now leave 11 minutes earlier than the typical American commuter (7:38 AM). Since the 2019 release, which covers the years just before the pandemic, the typical start in Hale County has moved 14 minutes later. The 2024 release is the latest typical start for Hale County in the whole series.

How does Hale County's commute time compare?

Metric	Hale County	Alabama	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	28.5 min	22.1 min	22.4 min
Departure Window	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM
Secondary Departure Window	06:00 AM – 06:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	2.2%	8.8%	15.0%
Walked	1.0%	1.1%	2.4%
Public Transit	0.3%	0.3%	3.2%

The average commute time in Hale County is 28.5 minutes, longer than the 22.1 minutes in Alabama.

The share of commuters using public transit is about the same as Alabama. 1.0% commute by walking, lower than the 1.1% in Alabama.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau