Anaheim Commute Time Map & Patterns

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Commuting in Anaheim, California: how long it takes, when people leave home and how they get to work. Ask Map AI about any address.

You 9/24/26, 3:41 PM

Is the commute in Anaheim longer than the national average?

Map AI 9/24/26, 3:41 PM

Commute Time Burden in Anaheim: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Anaheim spend about 48 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 199 hours, about 8.3 full days, spent commuting. That is 2% more time on the road than the California average of 23.5 minutes each way, a difference of 0.4 minutes.

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

Working from home just 2 days a week in Anaheim would save about 80 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,465 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)
Anaheim	23.9 min	47.7 min	199 hrs/yr	$6,162	4,034
California	23.5 min	47.0 min	196 hrs/yr	$6,065	2,449
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.

Anaheim Commute Map

On average, it takes 23.9 minutes to get to work in Anaheim. That's 6% longer than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM, followed by 08:00 AM – 08:29 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 11.2% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Anaheim

Commute Mode Trends in Anaheim, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Anaheim 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.

Share of workers aged 16 and over, by ACS 5-year release year. Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Show commute mode data by year

Year	Car	Worked at Home	Public Transportation	Walked	Other	Bicycle	Taxi	Motorcycle
2009	87.6%	2.8%	5.3%	2.3%	0.7%	1.0%	0.0%	0.3%
2010	88.3%	2.8%	4.9%	2.3%	0.6%	0.9%	0.0%	0.3%
2011	88.1%	2.9%	4.9%	2.1%	0.6%	1.0%	0.0%	0.3%
2012	88.0%	3.0%	4.9%	2.0%	0.7%	1.0%	0.0%	0.3%
2013	88.6%	3.0%	4.4%	1.8%	0.8%	1.0%	0.0%	0.3%
2014	88.8%	3.1%	4.4%	1.9%	0.8%	0.8%	0.0%	0.3%
2015	89.1%	3.2%	4.0%	1.9%	0.6%	0.9%	0.0%	0.3%
2016	89.4%	3.2%	3.7%	2.0%	0.6%	0.7%	0.0%	0.4%
2017	89.5%	3.5%	3.4%	2.0%	0.6%	0.7%	0.0%	0.3%
2018	89.5%	3.5%	3.4%	2.1%	0.4%	0.6%	0.1%	0.3%
2019	89.5%	3.5%	3.2%	1.9%	0.8%	0.6%	0.1%	0.3%
2020	88.9%	4.8%	2.9%	1.6%	1.0%	0.4%	0.1%	0.3%
2021	87.5%	6.5%	2.5%	1.5%	1.1%	0.5%	0.1%	0.2%
2022	86.7%	8.0%	2.1%	1.4%	1.1%	0.5%	0.1%	0.1%
2023	85.1%	9.4%	1.9%	1.5%	1.3%	0.5%	0.1%	0.2%
2024	83.2%	11.2%	1.7%	1.6%	1.3%	0.5%	0.2%	0.1%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share peaked in 2017 at 89.5%. Overall it fell from 87.6% in 2009 to 83.2% in 2024, down 4.4 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 5 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Anaheim: its share of workers rose from 2.8% in 2009 to 11.2% in 2024, up 8.4 percentage points. Most of that increase, 7.7 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Public transit lost the most ground, falling from 5.3% to 1.7% of workers (down 3.6 percentage points).

Working from home overtook public transit to become the 2nd most common choice in the 2017 release and has stayed ahead since.

Commute Start Times in Anaheim

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Anaheim?

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

12:00-4:59 AM		7.6%
5:00-5:29 AM		4.8%
5:30-5:59 AM		4.9%
6:00-6:29 AM		9.5%
6:30-6:59 AM		8.3%
7:00-7:29 AM		13.5%
7:30-7:59 AM		9.4%
8:00-8:29 AM		11.6%
8:30-8:59 AM		3.7%
9:00-9:59 AM		7.5%
10:00-10:59 AM		3.3%
11:00-11:59 AM		1.9%
12:00-3:59 PM		7.7%
4:00-11:59 PM		6.2%

Anaheim California Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Anaheim is 7:00-7:29 AM, when 13.5% of commuters leave home, compared with 13.1% across California. Early starts are more common than in California: 17.3% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 15.8% there. The morning rush looks much like California's: 42.9% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 43.3% there. About 1 in 4 commuters (26.6%) 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 Anaheim, 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 Anaheim 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 Anaheim next to California 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.

Median time commuters leave home, by ACS 5-year release year. Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Anaheim	California	United States
2009	7:29 AM	7:39 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:30 AM	7:41 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:30 AM	7:41 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:30 AM	7:42 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:29 AM	7:43 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:27 AM	7:43 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:26 AM	7:43 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:25 AM	7:43 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:25 AM	7:42 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:27 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:27 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:29 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:30 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:30 AM	7:43 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:32 AM	7:44 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:34 AM	7:45 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Anaheim were on the road by 7:34 AM, 5 minutes later than in 2009 (7:29 AM). California followed the same path, with the typical start moving 6 minutes later. Commuters in Anaheim now leave 4 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 Anaheim has moved 8 minutes later. The 2024 release is the latest typical start for Anaheim in the whole series.

How does Anaheim's commute time compare?

Metric	Anaheim	California	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	23.9 min	23.5 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	08:00 AM – 08:29 AM	08:00 AM – 08:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	11.2%	17.2%	15.0%
Walked	1.6%	2.4%	2.4%
Public Transit	1.7%	2.9%	3.2%

The average commute time in Anaheim is 23.9 minutes, longer than the 23.5 minutes in California.

1.7% commute by public transit, lower than the 2.9% in California. 1.6% commute by walking, lower than the 2.4% in California.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Anaheim, CA Commute Compared With Nearby Cities

Anaheim, CA is the largest of the 5 cities compared here, 333,336 residents against a local median of 93,238. Where Anaheim, CA breaks from the cities next to it is work from home, sitting 26% below the local median of 15.2% at 11.2%.

The cities themselves sit within 2.6% of each other on work from home, a tighter band than the gap between any of them and Anaheim, CA, which makes it a genuine outlier here rather than one end of a wide local spread. Anaheim, CA has the 5th highest work from home of the 5 areas compared here.

Area	Population	One-way commute	Work from home	Typical departure
Anaheim, CA	333,336	23.9 min #3/5	11.2% #5/5	7:34 AM #1/5
Placentia, CA	53,416	23.1 min	15.6%	7:39 AM
Orange, CA	133,060	22.7 min	17.3%	7:49 AM
Fullerton, CA	142,090	25.9 min	14.7%	7:58 AM
Brea, CA	42,002	28.3 min	14.7%	7:49 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Anaheim, California.

Is commuting expensive in Anaheim, California?

Commuters here spend an estimated 199 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $6,162 at a typical national wage. That's 2% more than the typical California commuter spends.

What time should you leave for work to avoid traffic in Anaheim, California?

Traffic peaks between 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM in Anaheim, California. Leaving before or after this window is the single easiest way to avoid the heaviest local congestion, though 08:00 AM – 08:29 AM also sees a secondary bump.