Prairie County Commute Time Map & Patterns

Commute Time Burden in Prairie County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Prairie County spend about 47 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 198 hours, about 8.2 full days, spent commuting. That is 27% more time on the road than the Arkansas average of 18.6 minutes each way, a difference of 5.1 minutes.

Prairie County holds about 0.3% of Arkansas's population and accounts for roughly 0.3% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Prairie County would save about 79 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,451 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)
Prairie County	23.7 min	47.4 min	198 hrs/yr	$6,126	416
Arkansas	18.6 min	37.2 min	155 hrs/yr	$4,807	912
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: Arkansas Counties

Compare commute times among different counties

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On average, it takes 23.7 minutes to get to work in Prairie County. That's 6% longer than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

Slower than 81% of counties in Arkansas

The most common departure window is 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM, followed by 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 3.3% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Prairie County

• Car: 94.3%
• Worked at Home: 3.3%
• Other: 1.6%
• Walked: 0.7%
• Motorcycle: < 0.1% unusually low
• Public Transportation: < 0.1% unusually low
• Taxi: < 0.1% unusually low
• Bicycle: < 0.1% unusually low

Riding a motorcycle is essentially absent in Prairie County, versus 0.1% in Arkansas.

Public transit is essentially absent in Prairie County, versus 0.3% in Arkansas.

Taking a taxi is essentially absent in Prairie County, versus 0.1% in Arkansas.

Biking is essentially absent in Prairie County, versus 0.2% in Arkansas.

Commute Mode Trends in Prairie County, 2009-2024

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

Show commute mode data by year

Year	Car	Worked at Home	Other	Walked	Public Transportation	Taxi	Motorcycle	Bicycle
2009	91.9%	3.2%	1.4%	3.1%	0.0%	0.0%	0.4%	0.0%
2010	90.4%	4.5%	0.4%	4.1%	0.0%	0.0%	0.6%	0.0%
2011	89.6%	4.2%	0.6%	4.6%	0.4%	0.0%	0.7%	0.0%
2012	89.7%	4.9%	0.2%	4.1%	0.5%	0.0%	0.6%	0.0%
2013	90.7%	4.5%	0.6%	3.5%	0.6%	0.0%	0.1%	0.0%
2014	90.4%	5.0%	0.6%	3.2%	0.6%	0.0%	0.1%	0.0%
2015	90.1%	5.1%	0.9%	2.7%	1.1%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2016	90.9%	5.4%	1.4%	2.3%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2017	90.2%	4.9%	2.7%	2.2%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2018	86.3%	8.2%	2.5%	2.9%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2019	85.9%	8.5%	2.8%	2.8%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2020	88.2%	7.5%	2.1%	2.2%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2021	89.7%	7.2%	1.4%	1.8%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2022	90.1%	7.3%	0.8%	1.8%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2023	93.8%	3.6%	0.8%	1.8%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2024	94.3%	3.3%	1.6%	0.7%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share bottomed out in 2019 at 85.9%. Overall it rose from 91.9% in 2009 to 94.3% in 2024, up 2.4 percentage points. It has risen in each of the last 5 releases.

Walking lost the most ground, falling from 3.1% to 0.7% of workers (down 2.4 percentage points).

Working from home peaked at 8.5% in 2019 and has since fallen back to 3.3%.

Commute Start Times in Prairie County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Prairie County?

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

12:00-4:59 AM	12:00-4:59 AM Prairie County7.6% Arkansas5.6%	7.6%
5:00-5:29 AM	5:00-5:29 AM Prairie County3.0% Arkansas4.1%	3.0%
5:30-5:59 AM	5:30-5:59 AM Prairie County8.7% Arkansas5.2%	8.7%
6:00-6:29 AM	6:00-6:29 AM Prairie County11.8% Arkansas9.3%	11.8%
6:30-6:59 AM	6:30-6:59 AM Prairie County10.7% Arkansas11.2%	10.7%
7:00-7:29 AM	7:00-7:29 AM Prairie County17.9% Arkansas17.5%	17.9%
7:30-7:59 AM	7:30-7:59 AM Prairie County21.6% Arkansas13.9%	21.6%
8:00-8:29 AM	8:00-8:29 AM Prairie County6.5% Arkansas9.2%	6.5%
8:30-8:59 AM	8:30-8:59 AM Prairie County1.0% Arkansas3.6%	1.0%
9:00-9:59 AM	9:00-9:59 AM Prairie County3.8% Arkansas4.5%	3.8%
10:00-10:59 AM	10:00-10:59 AM Prairie County0.1% Arkansas2.2%	0.1%
11:00-11:59 AM	11:00-11:59 AM Prairie County0.3% Arkansas1.1%	0.3%
12:00-3:59 PM	12:00-3:59 PM Prairie County4.0% Arkansas6.2%	4.0%
4:00-11:59 PM	4:00-11:59 PM Prairie County3.0% Arkansas6.4%	3.0%

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

The busiest time to head out in Prairie County is 7:30-7:59 AM, when 21.6% of commuters leave home, compared with 13.9% across Arkansas. Early starts are more common than in Arkansas: 19.3% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 14.8% there. The morning rush is more concentrated than in Arkansas: 56.7% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 51.9% there. About 1 in 9 commuters (11.3%) 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 Prairie 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 Prairie 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 Prairie County next to Arkansas 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.

• Prairie County
• Arkansas
• United States

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Prairie County	Arkansas	United States
2009	7:08 AM	7:28 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:07 AM	7:28 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:10 AM	7:28 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:08 AM	7:27 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:07 AM	7:27 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:00 AM	7:27 AM	7:39 AM
2015	6:57 AM	7:27 AM	7:38 AM
2016	6:51 AM	7:26 AM	7:38 AM
2017	6:50 AM	7:26 AM	7:38 AM
2018	6:53 AM	7:26 AM	7:37 AM
2019	6:58 AM	7:26 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:04 AM	7:26 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:08 AM	7:26 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:04 AM	7:26 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:11 AM	7:26 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:14 AM	7:25 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Prairie County were on the road by 7:14 AM, 5 minutes later than in 2009 (7:08 AM). That goes against the trend across Arkansas, where the typical commuter now leaves 3 minutes earlier than in 2009. Commuters in Prairie County now leave 24 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 Prairie County has moved 15 minutes later. The 2024 release is the latest typical start for Prairie County in the whole series.

How does Prairie County's commute time compare?

Metric	Prairie County	Arkansas	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	23.7 min	18.6 min	22.4 min
Departure Window	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM
Secondary Departure Window	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	3.3%	8.8%	15.0%
Walked	0.7%	1.4%	2.4%
Public Transit	< 0.1%	0.3%	3.2%

The average commute time in Prairie County is 23.7 minutes, longer than the 18.6 minutes in Arkansas.

0.0% commute by public transit, lower than the 0.3% in Arkansas. 0.7% commute by walking, lower than the 1.4% in Arkansas.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau