Fair Oaks Commute Time Map & Patterns

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Commuting in Fair Oaks, 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, 7:54 PM

What does a typical morning commute look like in Fair Oaks?

Map AI 10/21/26, 7:54 PM

Commute Time Burden in Fair Oaks: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Fair Oaks spend about 53 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 220 hours, about 9.2 full days, spent commuting. That is 13% more time on the road than the California average of 23.5 minutes each way, a difference of 3.0 minutes.

Fair Oaks 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 Fair Oaks would save about 88 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,731 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)
Fair Oaks	26.4 min	52.9 min	220 hrs/yr	$6,828	5,155
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.

Fair Oaks Commute Map

On average, it takes 26.4 minutes to get to work in Fair Oaks. That's 18% longer than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM, followed by 08:00 AM – 08:29 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 23.8% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Fair Oaks

Biking is unusually rare in Fair Oaks: 4.2 times less than the California average (0.2% vs 0.7%).

Commute Mode Trends in Fair Oaks, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Fair Oaks 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	Walked	Public Transportation	Other	Motorcycle	Taxi	Bicycle
2009	87.9%	6.8%	1.3%	1.5%	1.0%	0.5%	0.0%	0.9%
2010	88.3%	7.2%	1.0%	1.5%	0.7%	0.5%	0.0%	0.8%
2011	87.7%	7.4%	0.9%	1.9%	0.8%	0.4%	0.0%	0.9%
2012	88.1%	7.1%	0.8%	2.0%	0.9%	0.6%	0.0%	0.4%
2013	87.6%	7.5%	0.9%	2.0%	1.1%	0.4%	0.0%	0.6%
2014	85.5%	7.5%	1.3%	3.4%	0.9%	0.3%	0.0%	1.1%
2015	85.3%	7.5%	1.8%	3.6%	0.7%	0.2%	0.0%	0.9%
2016	85.4%	8.0%	1.9%	3.0%	0.5%	0.4%	0.0%	0.8%
2017	84.3%	8.8%	2.3%	2.7%	0.4%	0.3%	0.0%	1.2%
2018	84.2%	9.2%	2.9%	2.1%	0.3%	0.2%	0.0%	1.0%
2019	86.0%	9.7%	1.5%	1.4%	0.3%	0.3%	0.0%	0.8%
2020	82.5%	12.9%	1.3%	1.7%	0.4%	0.4%	0.0%	0.7%
2021	81.7%	14.4%	0.9%	1.7%	0.5%	0.3%	0.0%	0.6%
2022	79.2%	17.5%	1.1%	1.2%	0.5%	0.3%	0.0%	0.2%
2023	76.0%	20.2%	1.1%	1.5%	0.6%	0.5%	0.0%	0.1%
2024	72.3%	23.8%	1.3%	1.1%	0.7%	0.4%	0.2%	0.2%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share peaked in 2010 at 88.3%. Overall it fell from 87.9% in 2009 to 72.3% in 2024, down 15.6 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 5 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Fair Oaks: its share of workers rose from 6.8% in 2009 to 23.8% in 2024, up 17.0 percentage points. Most of that increase, 14.1 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Biking lost the most ground, falling from 0.9% to 0.2% of workers (down 0.7 percentage points).

Public transit peaked at 3.6% in 2015 and has since fallen back to 1.1%.

Commute Start Times in Fair Oaks

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Fair Oaks?

The bars show when commuters in Fair Oaks 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		4.2%
5:00-5:29 AM		3.4%
5:30-5:59 AM		5.1%
6:00-6:29 AM		8.0%
6:30-6:59 AM		6.1%
7:00-7:29 AM		12.1%
7:30-7:59 AM		17.0%
8:00-8:29 AM		12.3%
8:30-8:59 AM		7.7%
9:00-9:59 AM		6.1%
10:00-10:59 AM		5.4%
11:00-11:59 AM		1.9%
12:00-3:59 PM		5.4%
4:00-11:59 PM		5.4%

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

The busiest time to head out in Fair Oaks is 7:30-7:59 AM, when 17.0% of commuters leave home, compared with 10.2% across California. Early starts are less common than in California: 12.7% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 15.8% there. The morning rush is more concentrated than in California: 47.5% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 43.3% there. About 1 in 4 commuters (24.1%) 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 Fair Oaks, 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 Fair Oaks 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 Fair Oaks 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	Fair Oaks	California	United States
2009	7:43 AM	7:39 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:41 AM	7:41 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:44 AM	7:41 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:44 AM	7:42 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:44 AM	7:43 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:44 AM	7:43 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:44 AM	7:43 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:44 AM	7:43 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:44 AM	7:42 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:40 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:37 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:42 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:40 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:41 AM	7:43 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:48 AM	7:44 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:50 AM	7:45 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Fair Oaks were on the road by 7:50 AM, 7 minutes later than in 2009 (7:43 AM). California followed the same path, with the typical start moving 6 minutes later. Commuters in Fair Oaks now leave 12 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 Fair Oaks has moved 12 minutes later. The 2024 release is the latest typical start for Fair Oaks in the whole series.

How does Fair Oaks's commute time compare?

Metric	Fair Oaks	California	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	26.4 min	23.5 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	08:00 AM – 08:29 AM	08:00 AM – 08:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	23.8%	17.2%	15.0%
Walked	1.3%	2.4%	2.4%
Public Transit	1.1%	2.9%	3.2%

The average commute time in Fair Oaks is 26.4 minutes, longer than the 23.5 minutes in California.

1.1% commute by public transit, lower than the 2.9% in California. 1.3% commute by walking, lower than the 2.4% in California.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Fair Oaks, CA Commute Compared With Nearby Cities

Fair Oaks, CA is the smallest of the 5 cities compared here, 32,617 residents against a local median of 77,088. Fair Oaks, CA's work from home, at 23.8%, runs 22% above the 19.5% typical of the cities around it.

The cities themselves sit within 3.4% of each other on work from home, a tighter band than the gap between any of them and Fair Oaks, CA, which makes it a genuine outlier here rather than one end of a wide local spread. Fair Oaks, CA has the highest work from home of the 5 areas compared here.

Area	Population	One-way commute	Work from home	Typical departure
Fair Oaks, CA	32,617	26.4 min #4/5	23.8% #1/5	7:50 AM #5/5
Orangevale, CA	35,887	27.7 min	19.0%	7:24 AM
Citrus Heights, CA	86,009	23.3 min	17.0%	7:39 AM
Rancho Cordova, CA	77,906	23.3 min	20.4%	7:34 AM
Carmichael, CA	76,270	22.8 min	20.1%	7:48 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Fair Oaks, California.

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

Commuters here spend an estimated 220 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $6,828 at a typical national wage. That's 13% more than the typical California commuter spends.

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

Traffic peaks between 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM in Fair Oaks, 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.

How much time do residents in Fair Oaks, California save by working from home?

About 23.8% of workers here already work from home. Working from home just 2 days a week in Fair Oaks would save about 88 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,731 at the same national wage assumption used above.