Arkansas Commute Time Map & Patterns

Commute Time Burden in Arkansas: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Arkansas spend about 37 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 155 hours, about 6.5 full days, spent commuting. That is 17% less time on the road than the US average of 22.4 minutes each way, a difference of 3.8 minutes.

Arkansas holds about 0.9% of US's population but accounts for roughly 0.8% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Arkansas would save about 62 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,923 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)
Arkansas	18.6 min	37.2 min	155 hrs/yr	$4,807	912
US	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: Arkansas Counties

Compare commute times among different counties

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On average, it takes 18.6 minutes to get to work in Arkansas. That's 17% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

Faster than 82% of states in US

The most common departure window is 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM, followed by 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 8.8% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Arkansas

• Car: 88.3%
• Worked at Home: 8.8%
• Walked: 1.4%
• Other: 0.9%
• Public Transportation: 0.3% unusually low
• Bicycle: 0.2%
• Motorcycle: 0.1%
• Taxi: < 0.1%

Public transit is unusually rare in Arkansas: 12.1 times less than the US average (0.3% vs 3.2%).

Commute Mode Trends in Arkansas, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Arkansas 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
• Other
• Public Transportation
• Bicycle
• Taxi
• Motorcycle

Show commute mode data by year

Year	Car	Worked at Home	Walked	Other	Public Transportation	Bicycle	Taxi	Motorcycle
2009	93.0%	3.3%	1.8%	1.0%	0.4%	0.2%	0.0%	0.3%
2010	93.0%	3.3%	1.8%	1.0%	0.4%	0.1%	0.1%	0.3%
2011	93.0%	3.3%	1.8%	1.0%	0.4%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%
2012	93.1%	3.3%	1.8%	0.9%	0.4%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%
2013	93.3%	3.2%	1.8%	0.9%	0.4%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%
2014	93.4%	3.2%	1.7%	0.9%	0.4%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%
2015	93.3%	3.2%	1.8%	0.8%	0.4%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%
2016	93.4%	3.2%	1.8%	0.8%	0.4%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%
2017	93.4%	3.2%	1.7%	0.8%	0.4%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%
2018	93.3%	3.4%	1.7%	0.8%	0.4%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%
2019	93.2%	3.5%	1.8%	0.8%	0.4%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%
2020	92.5%	4.4%	1.6%	0.8%	0.3%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%
2021	91.4%	5.6%	1.5%	0.8%	0.3%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%
2022	90.3%	6.7%	1.5%	0.9%	0.3%	0.2%	0.0%	0.1%
2023	89.3%	7.8%	1.5%	0.8%	0.3%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%
2024	88.3%	8.8%	1.4%	0.9%	0.3%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share peaked in 2014 at 93.4%. Overall it fell from 93.0% in 2009 to 88.3% in 2024, down 4.7 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 7 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Arkansas: its share of workers rose from 3.3% in 2009 to 8.8% in 2024, up 5.5 percentage points. Most of that increase, 5.3 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Commute Start Times in Arkansas

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Arkansas?

The bars show when commuters in Arkansas 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 the U.S. for comparison. Hover over or tap a row for the exact numbers.

12:00-4:59 AM	12:00-4:59 AM Arkansas5.6% The U.S.5.5%	5.6%
5:00-5:29 AM	5:00-5:29 AM Arkansas4.1% The U.S.4.0%	4.1%
5:30-5:59 AM	5:30-5:59 AM Arkansas5.2% The U.S.4.9%	5.2%
6:00-6:29 AM	6:00-6:29 AM Arkansas9.3% The U.S.8.7%	9.3%
6:30-6:59 AM	6:30-6:59 AM Arkansas11.2% The U.S.9.4%	11.2%
7:00-7:29 AM	7:00-7:29 AM Arkansas17.5% The U.S.14.4%	17.5%
7:30-7:59 AM	7:30-7:59 AM Arkansas13.9% The U.S.11.9%	13.9%
8:00-8:29 AM	8:00-8:29 AM Arkansas9.2% The U.S.11.5%	9.2%
8:30-8:59 AM	8:30-8:59 AM Arkansas3.6% The U.S.5.5%	3.6%
9:00-9:59 AM	9:00-9:59 AM Arkansas4.5% The U.S.6.8%	4.5%
10:00-10:59 AM	10:00-10:59 AM Arkansas2.2% The U.S.3.1%	2.2%
11:00-11:59 AM	11:00-11:59 AM Arkansas1.1% The U.S.1.5%	1.1%
12:00-3:59 PM	12:00-3:59 PM Arkansas6.2% The U.S.6.8%	6.2%
4:00-11:59 PM	4:00-11:59 PM Arkansas6.4% The U.S.6.1%	6.4%

Arkansas The U.S. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Arkansas is 7:00-7:29 AM, when 17.5% of commuters leave home, compared with 14.4% across the U.S.. Early starts are about as common as in the U.S.: 14.8% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 14.4% there. The morning rush is more concentrated than in the U.S.: 51.9% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 47.1% there. About 1 in 5 commuters (20.5%) 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 Arkansas, 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 Arkansas 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 Arkansas next to 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.

• Arkansas
• United States

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Arkansas	United States
2009	7:28 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:28 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:28 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:27 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:27 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:27 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:27 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:26 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:26 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:26 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:26 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:26 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:26 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:26 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:26 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:25 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Arkansas were on the road by 7:25 AM, 3 minutes earlier than in 2009 (7:28 AM). Commuters in Arkansas now leave 13 minutes earlier than the typical American commuter (7:38 AM). The 2024 release is the earliest typical start for Arkansas in the whole series.

How does Arkansas's commute time compare?

Metric	Arkansas	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	18.6 min	22.4 min
Work From Home	8.8%	15.0%
Walked	1.4%	2.4%
Public Transit	0.3%	3.2%

The average commute time in Arkansas is 18.6 minutes, shorter than the 22.4 minutes in US.

0.3% commute by public transit, lower than the 3.2% in US. 1.4% commute by walking, lower than the 2.4% in US.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau