Montclair Commute Time Map & Patterns

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Commuting in Montclair, 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, 3:43 PM

What does a typical morning commute look like in Montclair?

Map AI 9/24/26, 3:43 PM

Commute Time Burden in Montclair: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Montclair spend about 52 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 216 hours, about 9.0 full days, spent commuting. That is 11% more time on the road than the California average of 23.5 minutes each way, a difference of 2.5 minutes.

Montclair 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 Montclair would save about 86 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,681 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)
Montclair	25.9 min	51.9 min	216 hrs/yr	$6,702	2,598
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.

Montclair Commute Map

On average, it takes 25.9 minutes to get to work in Montclair. That's 16% longer than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 12:00 AM – 04:59 AM, followed by 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 6.0% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Montclair

Public transit is unusually rare in Montclair: 3.8 times less than the California average (0.7% vs 2.9%).

Commute Mode Trends in Montclair, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Montclair 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	88.5%	3.1%	3.0%	0.6%	3.6%	0.7%	0.0%	0.4%
2010	89.5%	3.1%	3.4%	0.5%	2.8%	0.4%	0.0%	0.3%
2011	89.9%	2.2%	3.2%	0.4%	3.5%	0.4%	0.0%	0.5%
2012	90.5%	2.0%	2.6%	0.5%	3.8%	0.3%	0.0%	0.3%
2013	91.4%	1.7%	2.2%	0.5%	3.5%	0.5%	0.0%	0.2%
2014	91.7%	1.2%	2.2%	0.7%	3.1%	0.8%	0.0%	0.3%
2015	91.3%	1.5%	2.0%	0.8%	3.1%	1.0%	0.0%	0.3%
2016	91.9%	1.4%	1.9%	0.7%	2.7%	1.1%	0.0%	0.4%
2017	91.9%	1.7%	1.6%	0.6%	2.3%	1.5%	0.0%	0.5%
2018	92.0%	2.5%	1.2%	0.6%	2.5%	0.7%	0.0%	0.4%
2019	92.7%	3.0%	0.9%	0.5%	2.2%	0.4%	0.0%	0.3%
2020	92.6%	3.4%	1.3%	0.1%	1.7%	0.4%	0.1%	0.4%
2021	90.6%	5.3%	1.2%	0.7%	1.6%	0.3%	0.1%	0.1%
2022	90.2%	5.1%	1.7%	0.9%	1.3%	0.5%	0.3%	0.1%
2023	90.4%	5.4%	1.3%	0.9%	1.0%	0.7%	0.2%	0.1%
2024	89.8%	6.0%	1.7%	0.8%	0.7%	0.5%	0.3%	0.1%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share peaked in 2019 at 92.7%. Overall it rose from 88.5% in 2009 to 89.8% in 2024, up 1.3 percentage points. It has fallen in the latest release.

Working from home gained the most ground in Montclair: its share of workers rose from 3.1% in 2009 to 6.0% in 2024, up 2.9 percentage points. Most of that increase, 3.0 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Public transit lost the most ground, falling from 3.6% to 0.7% of workers (down 2.9 percentage points).

Working from home overtook public transit to become the 2nd most common choice in the 2019 release and has stayed ahead since.

Commute Start Times in Montclair

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Montclair?

The bars show when commuters in Montclair 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		13.7%
5:00-5:29 AM		6.4%
5:30-5:59 AM		4.9%
6:00-6:29 AM		8.8%
6:30-6:59 AM		6.3%
7:00-7:29 AM		11.9%
7:30-7:59 AM		8.0%
8:00-8:29 AM		11.3%
8:30-8:59 AM		3.2%
9:00-9:59 AM		4.8%
10:00-10:59 AM		1.2%
11:00-11:59 AM		2.4%
12:00-3:59 PM		9.5%
4:00-11:59 PM		7.7%

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

The busiest time to head out in Montclair is 12:00-4:59 AM, when 13.7% of commuters leave home, compared with 6.7% across California. Early starts are more common than in California: 24.9% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 15.8% there. The morning rush is more spread out than in California: 37.5% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 43.3% there. About 1 in 4 commuters (25.5%) 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 Montclair, 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 Montclair 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 Montclair 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	Montclair	California	United States
2009	7:15 AM	7:39 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:11 AM	7:41 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:17 AM	7:41 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:20 AM	7:42 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:14 AM	7:43 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:13 AM	7:43 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:18 AM	7:43 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:17 AM	7:43 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:22 AM	7:42 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:19 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:20 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:22 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:26 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:23 AM	7:43 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:36 AM	7:44 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:25 AM	7:45 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Montclair were on the road by 7:25 AM, 10 minutes later than in 2009 (7:15 AM). The shift is sharper than across California, where the typical start moved 6 minutes later. Commuters in Montclair now leave 13 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 Montclair has moved 5 minutes later.

How does Montclair's commute time compare?

Metric	Montclair	California	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	25.9 min	23.5 min	22.4 min
Departure Window	12:00 AM – 04:59 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM
Secondary Departure Window	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	08:00 AM – 08:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	6.0%	17.2%	15.0%
Walked	1.7%	2.4%	2.4%
Public Transit	0.7%	2.9%	3.2%

The average commute time in Montclair is 25.9 minutes, longer than the 23.5 minutes in California.

0.7% 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

Montclair, CA Commute Compared With Nearby Cities

Montclair, CA is the 4th largest of the 6 cities compared here, 38,094 residents against a local median of 79,252. Montclair, CA's work from home, at 6.0%, runs 62% below the 15.9% typical of the cities around it.

The cities themselves spread 15.5% on work from home, so Montclair, CA sits at one end of an already wide local range rather than apart from it. Montclair, CA has the 6th highest work from home of the 6 areas compared here.

Area	Population	One-way commute	Work from home	Typical departure
Montclair, CA	38,094	25.9 min #2/6	6.0% #6/6	7:25 AM #1/6
Claremont, CA	36,112	22.2 min	24.8%	8:01 AM
Upland, CA	79,252	26.6 min	13.8%	7:40 AM
Pomona, CA	148,496	28.2 min	9.2%	7:27 AM
La Verne, CA	29,835	27.3 min	22.9%	7:35 AM
Chino, CA	95,396	30.4 min	15.9%	7:29 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Montclair, California.

Is commuting expensive in Montclair, California?

Commuters here spend an estimated 216 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $6,702 at a typical national wage. That's 11% more than the typical California commuter spends.

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

Traffic peaks between 12:00 AM – 04:59 AM in Montclair, California. Leaving before or after this window is the single easiest way to avoid the heaviest local congestion, though 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM also sees a secondary bump.

Is public transportation a realistic commute option in Montclair, California?

Public transit usage is significantly lower here than typical: about 0.7% of commuters use it versus 2.9% in California, meaning a personal vehicle is essential for most workers.