Glendale Commute Time Map & Patterns

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Commuting in Glendale, 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, 3:37 PM

How many minutes is the average drive to work in Glendale?

Map AI 9/24/26, 3:37 PM

Commute Time Burden in Glendale: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Glendale spend about 51 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 212 hours, about 8.8 full days, spent commuting. That is 8% more time on the road than the California average of 23.5 minutes each way, a difference of 2.0 minutes.

Glendale holds about 0.5% of California's population and accounts for roughly 0.5% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Glendale would save about 85 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,629 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)
Glendale	25.4 min	50.9 min	212 hrs/yr	$6,573	3,845
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.

Glendale Commute Map

On average, it takes 25.4 minutes to get to work in Glendale. That's 14% longer than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 08:00 AM – 08:29 AM, followed by 09:00 AM – 09:59 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 21.2% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Glendale

Riding a motorcycle is unusually rare in Glendale: 8.7 times less than the California average (0.0% vs 0.2%).

Commute Mode Trends in Glendale, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Glendale 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	Other	Public Transportation	Bicycle	Taxi	Motorcycle
2009	85.4%	3.7%	4.1%	1.7%	4.3%	0.6%	0.1%	0.2%
2010	85.8%	4.0%	3.8%	1.6%	4.1%	0.5%	0.1%	0.2%
2011	84.8%	4.9%	3.9%	1.1%	4.5%	0.6%	0.1%	0.3%
2012	84.8%	5.3%	3.8%	1.0%	4.3%	0.5%	0.1%	0.2%
2013	84.4%	5.8%	3.8%	0.6%	4.5%	0.6%	0.1%	0.2%
2014	85.0%	5.6%	3.5%	0.6%	4.5%	0.6%	0.1%	0.2%
2015	84.4%	5.9%	3.6%	0.6%	4.6%	0.6%	0.0%	0.2%
2016	84.4%	6.0%	4.0%	0.6%	4.2%	0.6%	0.1%	0.2%
2017	84.7%	6.0%	4.0%	0.6%	3.8%	0.6%	0.2%	0.2%
2018	84.6%	6.3%	3.8%	1.0%	3.5%	0.5%	0.2%	0.1%
2019	84.1%	6.8%	3.7%	1.4%	3.1%	0.5%	0.2%	0.1%
2020	80.6%	10.7%	3.5%	1.5%	2.9%	0.4%	0.3%	0.1%
2021	78.3%	13.3%	3.4%	1.8%	2.6%	0.4%	0.2%	0.1%
2022	75.6%	16.4%	3.1%	2.0%	2.3%	0.4%	0.1%	0.1%
2023	73.1%	18.7%	2.9%	2.5%	2.1%	0.5%	0.2%	0.1%
2024	70.4%	21.2%	3.0%	2.5%	2.3%	0.4%	0.2%	0.0%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share peaked in 2010 at 85.8%. Overall it fell from 85.4% in 2009 to 70.4% in 2024, down 15.0 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 7 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Glendale: its share of workers rose from 3.7% in 2009 to 21.2% in 2024, up 17.5 percentage points. Most of that increase, 14.4 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Public transit lost the most ground, falling from 4.3% to 2.3% of workers (down 2.0 percentage points).

Working from home overtook walking to become the 2nd most common choice in the 2010 release and has stayed ahead since.

Commute Start Times in Glendale

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Glendale?

The bars show when commuters in Glendale 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		2.8%
5:00-5:29 AM		2.2%
5:30-5:59 AM		2.2%
6:00-6:29 AM		5.4%
6:30-6:59 AM		5.3%
7:00-7:29 AM		11.8%
7:30-7:59 AM		8.9%
8:00-8:29 AM		19.4%
8:30-8:59 AM		7.8%
9:00-9:59 AM		15.2%
10:00-10:59 AM		8.0%
11:00-11:59 AM		1.3%
12:00-3:59 PM		5.0%
4:00-11:59 PM		4.7%

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

The busiest time to head out in Glendale is 8:00-8:29 AM, when 19.4% of commuters leave home, compared with 12.6% across California. Early starts are less common than in California: 7.2% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 15.8% there. The morning rush is more concentrated than in California: 45.4% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 43.3% there. About 1 in 3 commuters (34.2%) 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 Glendale, 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 Glendale 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 Glendale 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	Glendale	California	United States
2009	8:05 AM	7:39 AM	7:37 AM
2010	8:08 AM	7:41 AM	7:38 AM
2011	8:06 AM	7:41 AM	7:38 AM
2012	8:05 AM	7:42 AM	7:38 AM
2013	8:07 AM	7:43 AM	7:39 AM
2014	8:06 AM	7:43 AM	7:39 AM
2015	8:05 AM	7:43 AM	7:38 AM
2016	8:05 AM	7:43 AM	7:38 AM
2017	8:07 AM	7:42 AM	7:38 AM
2018	8:08 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2019	8:11 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2020	8:11 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2021	8:15 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2022	8:14 AM	7:43 AM	7:37 AM
2023	8:17 AM	7:44 AM	7:38 AM
2024	8:18 AM	7:45 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Glendale were on the road by 8:18 AM, 12 minutes later than in 2009 (8:05 AM). The shift is sharper than across California, where the typical start moved 6 minutes later. Commuters in Glendale now leave 40 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 Glendale has moved 7 minutes later. The 2024 release is the latest typical start for Glendale in the whole series.

How does Glendale's commute time compare?

Metric	Glendale	California	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	25.4 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	09:00 AM – 09:59 AM	08:00 AM – 08:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	21.2%	17.2%	15.0%
Walked	3.0%	2.4%	2.4%
Public Transit	2.3%	2.9%	3.2%

The average commute time in Glendale is 25.4 minutes, longer than the 23.5 minutes in California.

2.3% commute by public transit, lower than the 2.9% in California. 3.0% commute by walking, higher than the 2.4% in California.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Glendale, CA Commute Compared With Nearby Cities

Glendale, CA is the largest of the 4 cities compared here, 190,568 residents against a local median of 104,547. Where Glendale, CA breaks from the cities next to it is work from home, sitting 22% below the local median of 27.3% at 21.2%.

The cities themselves sit within 4.2% of each other on work from home, a tighter band than the gap between any of them and Glendale, CA, which makes it a genuine outlier here rather than one end of a wide local spread. Glendale, CA has the 4th highest work from home of the 4 areas compared here.

Area	Population	One-way commute	Work from home	Typical departure
Glendale, CA	190,568	25.4 min #4/4	21.2% #4/4	8:18 AM #4/4
Burbank, CA	104,547	22.8 min	30.4%	8:16 AM
Pasadena, CA	138,535	22.6 min	27.3%	8:07 AM
Altadena, CA	39,664	23.5 min	26.1%	8:05 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Glendale, California.

What is the financial impact of commuting in Glendale, California?

Commuters here spend an estimated 212 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $6,573 at a typical national wage. That's 8% more than the typical California commuter spends.

What are the busiest morning travel hours in Glendale, California?

Traffic peaks between 08:00 AM – 08:29 AM in Glendale, California. Leaving before or after this window is the single easiest way to avoid the heaviest local congestion, though 09:00 AM – 09:59 AM also sees a secondary bump.