Downey Commute Time Map & Patterns

Help

Commuting in Downey, 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, 3:39 PM

How much time do drivers in Downey spend on the road daily?

Map AI 9/24/26, 3:39 PM

Commute Time Burden in Downey: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Downey spend about 56 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 232 hours, about 9.7 full days, spent commuting. That is 19% more time on the road than the California average of 23.5 minutes each way, a difference of 4.4 minutes.

Downey holds about 0.3% of California's population and accounts for roughly 0.3% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Downey would save about 93 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,880 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)
Downey	27.9 min	55.7 min	232 hrs/yr	$7,199	4,769
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.

Downey Commute Map

On average, it takes 27.9 minutes to get to work in Downey. That's 24% 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 9.1% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Downey

Biking is unusually rare in Downey: 5.8 times less than the California average (0.1% vs 0.7%).

Commute Mode Trends in Downey, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Downey 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	Taxi	Motorcycle	Bicycle
2009	91.9%	1.9%	2.7%	1.9%	1.1%	0.0%	0.2%	0.2%
2010	92.6%	2.1%	2.4%	1.7%	0.8%	0.0%	0.1%	0.3%
2011	93.1%	2.3%	2.2%	1.6%	0.4%	0.0%	0.2%	0.3%
2012	92.4%	2.4%	2.6%	1.8%	0.4%	0.0%	0.3%	0.2%
2013	92.1%	2.4%	3.0%	1.8%	0.2%	0.0%	0.3%	0.2%
2014	92.1%	2.7%	2.8%	1.7%	0.2%	0.0%	0.2%	0.3%
2015	91.3%	3.2%	2.9%	1.7%	0.4%	0.0%	0.2%	0.3%
2016	90.7%	3.3%	3.2%	1.9%	0.4%	0.0%	0.1%	0.4%
2017	90.3%	3.3%	3.6%	1.8%	0.4%	0.0%	0.1%	0.4%
2018	90.6%	3.5%	2.8%	1.7%	0.6%	0.1%	0.3%	0.4%
2019	90.4%	3.6%	2.6%	1.6%	0.7%	0.3%	0.3%	0.4%
2020	90.0%	3.7%	3.0%	1.6%	0.7%	0.2%	0.5%	0.3%
2021	87.8%	5.9%	2.8%	1.5%	1.1%	0.2%	0.5%	0.2%
2022	87.1%	7.2%	2.2%	1.7%	1.0%	0.1%	0.5%	0.3%
2023	85.5%	8.2%	2.9%	1.6%	1.2%	0.1%	0.2%	0.2%
2024	84.9%	9.1%	2.6%	1.7%	1.2%	0.2%	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 2011 at 93.1%. Overall it fell from 91.9% in 2009 to 84.9% in 2024, down 7.0 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 6 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Downey: its share of workers rose from 1.9% in 2009 to 9.1% in 2024, up 7.2 percentage points. Most of that increase, 5.5 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Working from home overtook public transit to become the 2nd most common choice in the 2018 release and has stayed ahead since.

Commute Start Times in Downey

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Downey?

The bars show when commuters in Downey 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		7.8%
5:00-5:29 AM		5.2%
5:30-5:59 AM		5.7%
6:00-6:29 AM		8.0%
6:30-6:59 AM		9.2%
7:00-7:29 AM		14.0%
7:30-7:59 AM		9.3%
8:00-8:29 AM		12.1%
8:30-8:59 AM		4.8%
9:00-9:59 AM		5.9%
10:00-10:59 AM		3.1%
11:00-11:59 AM		1.5%
12:00-3:59 PM		7.5%
4:00-11:59 PM		5.9%

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

The busiest time to head out in Downey is 7:00-7:29 AM, when 14.0% of commuters leave home, compared with 13.1% across California. Early starts are more common than in California: 18.7% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 15.8% there. The morning rush looks much like California's: 44.5% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 43.3% 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 Downey, 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 Downey 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 Downey 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	Downey	California	United States
2009	7:30 AM	7:39 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:29 AM	7:41 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:32 AM	7:41 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:28 AM	7:42 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:27 AM	7:43 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:26 AM	7:43 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:27 AM	7:43 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:26 AM	7:43 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:25 AM	7:42 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:29 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:29 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:29 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:28 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:31 AM	7:43 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:30 AM	7:44 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:30 AM	7:45 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Downey were on the road by 7:30 AM, almost exactly the same as in 2009. Across California, meanwhile, the typical commuter now leaves 6 minutes later than in 2009. Commuters in Downey now leave 7 minutes earlier than the typical American commuter (7:38 AM).

How does Downey's commute time compare?

Metric	Downey	California	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	27.9 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	9.1%	17.2%	15.0%
Walked	1.7%	2.4%	2.4%
Public Transit	2.6%	2.9%	3.2%

The average commute time in Downey is 27.9 minutes, longer than the 23.5 minutes in California.

2.6% commute by public transit, lower than the 2.9% in California. 1.7% commute by walking, lower than the 2.4% in California.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Downey, CA Commute Compared With Nearby Cities

Downey, CA is the largest of the 6 cities compared here, 112,177 residents against a local median of 51,757. Where Downey, CA breaks from the cities next to it is work from home, sitting 24% above the local median of 7.3% at 9.1%.

The cities themselves spread 5.6% on work from home, so Downey, CA sits at one end of an already wide local range rather than apart from it. Downey, CA has the 2nd highest work from home of the 6 areas compared here.

Area	Population	One-way commute	Work from home	Typical departure
Downey, CA	112,177	27.9 min #5/6	9.1% #2/6	7:30 AM #5/6
Bell Gardens, CA	38,229	26.6 min	5.6%	7:10 AM
Bellflower, CA	76,778	27.8 min	10.1%	7:35 AM
Paramount, CA	51,757	25.3 min	7.3%	7:27 AM
Norwalk, CA	98,812	27.5 min	8.1%	7:28 AM
Cudahy, CA	21,960	30.1 min	4.4%	7:09 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Downey, California.

Is living in Downey, California good for avoiding long commute costs?

Commuters here spend an estimated 232 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $7,199 at a typical national wage. That's 19% more than the typical California commuter spends.

When is peak congestion during the morning commute in Downey, California?

Traffic peaks between 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM in Downey, 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.