Davis Commute Time Map & Patterns

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

You 10/21/26, 4:17 PM

What does a typical morning commute look like in Davis?

Map AI 10/21/26, 4:17 PM

Commute Time Burden in Davis: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Davis spend about 35 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 144 hours, about 6.0 full days, spent commuting. That is 26% less time on the road than the California average of 23.5 minutes each way, a difference of 6.2 minutes.

Davis holds about 0.1% of California's population and accounts for roughly 0.1% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Davis would save about 58 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,789 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)
Davis	17.3 min	34.6 min	144 hrs/yr	$4,471	1,968
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.

Davis Commute Map

On average, it takes 17.3 minutes to get to work in Davis. That's 23% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 08:00 AM – 08:29 AM, followed by 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 21.3% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Davis

Driving is 29% less common in Davis than the California average (53.1% vs 75.2%).

Taking a taxi is essentially absent in Davis, versus 0.2% in California.

Biking is unusually common in Davis: 18.6 times more than the California average (12.9% vs 0.7%).

Davis stands out for active commuting: 18.3% of workers walk or bike to work, 6.0 times the California average of 3.1%.

Commute Mode Trends in Davis, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Davis 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	Bicycle	Public Transportation	Walked	Other	Motorcycle	Taxi
2009	65.4%	4.5%	17.3%	7.0%	4.5%	1.0%	0.3%	0.2%
2010	62.6%	4.7%	19.6%	7.4%	4.3%	1.0%	0.3%	0.1%
2011	62.8%	4.5%	19.9%	7.7%	4.0%	0.7%	0.3%	0.1%
2012	62.3%	5.2%	20.6%	7.5%	3.4%	0.6%	0.3%	0.1%
2013	61.0%	5.2%	22.8%	6.7%	3.7%	0.2%	0.3%	0.0%
2014	59.0%	5.2%	24.2%	6.2%	4.2%	0.7%	0.5%	0.0%
2015	58.5%	5.9%	23.4%	6.1%	4.8%	0.8%	0.5%	0.0%
2016	57.4%	6.3%	23.2%	6.4%	5.3%	0.8%	0.5%	0.0%
2017	58.1%	6.7%	21.9%	7.1%	5.0%	0.8%	0.4%	0.0%
2018	57.6%	7.1%	21.1%	8.0%	5.0%	0.7%	0.5%	0.0%
2019	59.1%	8.3%	19.6%	7.8%	4.4%	0.3%	0.5%	0.0%
2020	58.7%	12.2%	16.5%	8.0%	3.8%	0.3%	0.5%	0.0%
2021	55.5%	16.7%	15.7%	7.5%	3.6%	0.7%	0.4%	0.0%
2022	55.1%	18.6%	15.6%	6.1%	3.2%	0.9%	0.4%	0.0%
2023	54.8%	20.9%	14.2%	4.7%	3.9%	1.2%	0.2%	0.0%
2024	53.1%	21.3%	12.9%	5.6%	5.4%	1.4%	0.2%	0.0%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Overall its share fell from 65.4% in 2009 to 53.1% in 2024, down 12.3 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 5 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Davis: its share of workers rose from 4.5% in 2009 to 21.3% in 2024, up 16.8 percentage points. Most of that increase, 13.0 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Biking lost the most ground, falling from 17.3% to 12.9% of workers (down 4.4 percentage points).

Working from home overtook biking to become the 2nd most common choice in the 2021 release and has stayed ahead since.

Public transit peaked at 8.0% in 2018 and has since fallen back to 5.6%.

Commute Start Times in Davis

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Davis?

The bars show when commuters in Davis 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		3.4%
5:00-5:29 AM		1.2%
5:30-5:59 AM		2.9%
6:00-6:29 AM		3.9%
6:30-6:59 AM		5.0%
7:00-7:29 AM		9.0%
7:30-7:59 AM		11.6%
8:00-8:29 AM		14.5%
8:30-8:59 AM		11.3%
9:00-9:59 AM		11.5%
10:00-10:59 AM		6.6%
11:00-11:59 AM		3.2%
12:00-3:59 PM		9.9%
4:00-11:59 PM		5.9%

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

The busiest time to head out in Davis is 8:00-8:29 AM, when 14.5% of commuters leave home, compared with 12.6% across California. Early starts are less common than in California: 7.5% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 15.8% there. The morning rush is more spread out than in California: 40.2% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 43.3% there. About 1 in 3 commuters (37.1%) 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 Davis, 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 Davis 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 Davis 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	Davis	California	United States
2009	8:27 AM	7:39 AM	7:37 AM
2010	8:25 AM	7:41 AM	7:38 AM
2011	8:29 AM	7:41 AM	7:38 AM
2012	8:26 AM	7:42 AM	7:38 AM
2013	8:26 AM	7:43 AM	7:39 AM
2014	8:25 AM	7:43 AM	7:39 AM
2015	8:24 AM	7:43 AM	7:38 AM
2016	8:21 AM	7:43 AM	7:38 AM
2017	8:22 AM	7:42 AM	7:38 AM
2018	8:22 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2019	8:21 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2020	8:22 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2021	8:21 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2022	8:19 AM	7:43 AM	7:37 AM
2023	8:20 AM	7:44 AM	7:38 AM
2024	8:27 AM	7:45 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Davis were on the road by 8:27 AM, almost exactly the same as in 2009. Across California, meanwhile, the typical commuter now leaves 6 minutes later than in 2009. Commuters in Davis now leave 49 minutes later than the typical American commuter (7:38 AM). Since the 2019 release, which covers the years just before the pandemic, the typical start in Davis has moved 6 minutes later.

How does Davis's commute time compare?

Metric	Davis	California	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	17.3 min	23.5 min	22.4 min
Departure Window	08:00 AM – 08:29 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM
Secondary Departure Window	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	08:00 AM – 08:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	21.3%	17.2%	15.0%
Walked	5.4%	2.4%	2.4%
Public Transit	5.6%	2.9%	3.2%

The average commute time in Davis is 17.3 minutes, shorter than the 23.5 minutes in California.

5.6% commute by public transit, higher than the 2.9% in California. 5.4% commute by walking, higher than the 2.4% in California.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Davis, CA Commute Compared With Nearby Cities

How Davis, CA compares with the 1 cities closest to it.

Area	Population	One-way commute	Work from home	Typical departure
Davis, CA	53,546	17.3 min #1/2	21.3% #1/2	8:27 AM #2/2
Woodland, CA	53,515	19.0 min	11.6%	7:37 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Davis, California.

How much does the average commute cost workers in Davis, California?

Commuters here spend an estimated 144 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $4,471 at a typical national wage. That's 26% less than the typical California commuter spends.

When is rush hour worst in Davis, California?

Traffic peaks between 08:00 AM – 08:29 AM in Davis, California. Leaving before or after this window is the single easiest way to avoid the heaviest local congestion, though 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM also sees a secondary bump.