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Brighton Commute Time Map & Patterns

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

Updated

You 11/2/26, 6:22 PM
How many minutes is the average drive to work in Brighton?
Map AI 11/2/26, 6:22 PM

Commute Time Burden in Brighton: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Brighton spend about 61 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 256 hours, about 10.7 full days, spent commuting. That is 39% more time on the road than the Colorado average of 22.0 minutes each way, a difference of 8.7 minutes.

Brighton holds about 0.6% of Colorado's population but accounts for roughly 0.9% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Brighton would save about 102 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $3,173 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)
Brighton 30.7 min 61.4 min 256 hrs/yr $7,933 2,749
Colorado 22.0 min 44.1 min 184 hrs/yr $5,694 1,277
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.

Brighton Commute Map

On average, it takes 30.7 minutes to get to work in Brighton. That's 37% longer than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 06:30 AM – 06:59 AM, followed by 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 13.3% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Brighton

  • Car: 83.8%
  • Worked at Home: 13.3%
  • Public Transportation: 1.4%
  • Other: 0.8%
  • Walked: 0.5% unusually low
  • Bicycle: 0.2% unusually low
  • Motorcycle: < 0.1%
  • Taxi: < 0.1% unusually low

Walking is unusually rare in Brighton: 4.9 times less than the Colorado average (0.5% vs 2.5%).

Taking a taxi is essentially absent in Brighton, versus 0.1% in Colorado.

Biking is unusually rare in Brighton: 4.6 times less than the Colorado average (0.2% vs 0.9%).

Few people walk or bike to work in Brighton: just 0.7%, 4.8 times below the Colorado average of 3.4%.

Commute Mode Trends in Brighton, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Brighton 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 Other Walked Bicycle Motorcycle Taxi
2009 92.8% 2.6% 1.5% 0.8% 2.0% 0.2% 0.2% 0.0%
2010 93.3% 2.3% 1.5% 0.8% 1.7% 0.2% 0.3% 0.0%
2011 92.4% 2.9% 1.8% 0.9% 1.6% 0.2% 0.3% 0.0%
2012 91.8% 3.4% 1.4% 0.9% 2.0% 0.2% 0.2% 0.0%
2013 90.8% 4.3% 1.0% 1.3% 2.4% 0.1% 0.2% 0.0%
2014 90.8% 5.2% 1.0% 0.7% 1.9% 0.3% 0.1% 0.0%
2015 90.2% 6.2% 0.8% 0.8% 1.6% 0.3% 0.1% 0.0%
2016 90.1% 6.5% 0.6% 0.9% 1.6% 0.3% 0.0% 0.0%
2017 89.6% 7.1% 0.8% 1.1% 1.2% 0.2% 0.0% 0.0%
2018 90.7% 6.8% 0.7% 0.8% 0.7% 0.2% 0.2% 0.0%
2019 90.0% 7.0% 0.6% 1.4% 0.7% 0.0% 0.2% 0.0%
2020 88.7% 6.9% 2.1% 1.2% 0.9% 0.0% 0.2% 0.0%
2021 87.4% 8.1% 2.1% 1.2% 0.6% 0.2% 0.3% 0.0%
2022 87.8% 8.4% 1.7% 1.2% 0.4% 0.1% 0.4% 0.0%
2023 86.3% 10.4% 1.6% 1.1% 0.2% 0.3% 0.0% 0.0%
2024 83.8% 13.3% 1.4% 0.8% 0.5% 0.2% 0.1% 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 93.3%. Overall it fell from 92.8% in 2009 to 83.8% in 2024, down 9.0 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 2 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Brighton: its share of workers rose from 2.6% in 2009 to 13.3% in 2024, up 10.7 percentage points.

Walking lost the most ground, falling from 2.0% to 0.5% of workers (down 1.5 percentage points).

Public transit overtook walking to become the 3rd most common choice in the 2020 release and has stayed ahead since.

Commute Start Times in Brighton

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Brighton?

The bars show when commuters in Brighton 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 Colorado for comparison. Hover over or tap a row for the exact numbers.

12:00-4:59 AM
8.8%
5:00-5:29 AM
8.6%
5:30-5:59 AM
8.9%
6:00-6:29 AM
9.0%
6:30-6:59 AM
15.5%
7:00-7:29 AM
13.9%
7:30-7:59 AM
6.4%
8:00-8:29 AM
6.8%
8:30-8:59 AM
2.5%
9:00-9:59 AM
3.9%
10:00-10:59 AM
3.1%
11:00-11:59 AM
1.5%
12:00-3:59 PM
5.4%
4:00-11:59 PM
5.7%

Brighton Colorado Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Brighton is 6:30-6:59 AM, when 15.5% of commuters leave home, compared with 10.2% across Colorado. Early starts are more common than in Colorado: 26.3% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 13.1% there. The morning rush is more spread out than in Colorado: 42.6% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 50.1% there. About 1 in 5 commuters (19.6%) 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 Brighton, 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 Brighton 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 Brighton next to Colorado 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 Brighton Colorado United States
2009 7:11 AM 7:37 AM 7:37 AM
2010 7:11 AM 7:37 AM 7:38 AM
2011 7:09 AM 7:38 AM 7:38 AM
2012 7:10 AM 7:37 AM 7:38 AM
2013 7:09 AM 7:37 AM 7:39 AM
2014 7:12 AM 7:36 AM 7:39 AM
2015 7:13 AM 7:35 AM 7:38 AM
2016 7:13 AM 7:34 AM 7:38 AM
2017 7:11 AM 7:33 AM 7:38 AM
2018 7:10 AM 7:33 AM 7:37 AM
2019 7:06 AM 7:34 AM 7:37 AM
2020 7:02 AM 7:35 AM 7:37 AM
2021 7:01 AM 7:35 AM 7:37 AM
2022 7:03 AM 7:36 AM 7:37 AM
2023 7:01 AM 7:37 AM 7:38 AM
2024 6:59 AM 7:37 AM 7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Brighton were on the road by 6:59 AM, 12 minutes earlier than in 2009 (7:11 AM). Across Colorado, the typical start barely moved over the same years. Commuters in Brighton now leave 39 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 Brighton has moved 7 minutes earlier. The 2024 release is the earliest typical start for Brighton in the whole series.

How does Brighton's commute time compare?

Metric Brighton Colorado US Average
Avg. Commute Time 30.7 min 22.0 min 22.4 min
Departure Window 06:30 AM – 06:59 AM 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM
Secondary Departure Window 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home 13.3% 21.0% 15.0%
Walked 0.5% 2.5% 2.4%
Public Transit 1.4% 1.6% 3.2%

The average commute time in Brighton is 30.7 minutes, longer than the 22.0 minutes in Colorado.

1.4% commute by public transit, lower than the 1.6% in Colorado. 0.5% commute by walking, lower than the 2.5% in Colorado.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Brighton, CO Commute Compared With Nearby Cities

How Brighton, CO compares with the 1 cities closest to it.

Area Population One-way commute Work from home Typical departure
Brighton, CO 37,322 30.7 min #2/2 13.3% #2/2 6:58 AM #1/2
Commerce City, CO 65,816 30.0 min 15.9% 7:11 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Brighton, Colorado.

Is living in Brighton, Colorado good for avoiding long commute costs?

Commuters here spend an estimated 256 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $7,933 at a typical national wage. That's 39% more than the typical Colorado commuter spends.

When is peak congestion during the morning commute in Brighton, Colorado?

Traffic peaks between 06:30 AM – 06:59 AM in Brighton, Colorado. 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.