Ankeny Commute Time Map & Patterns

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

You 9/24/26, 3:59 PM

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

Map AI 9/24/26, 3:59 PM

Commute Time Burden in Ankeny: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Ankeny spend about 42 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 175 hours, about 7.3 full days, spent commuting. That is 24% more time on the road than the Iowa average of 17.0 minutes each way, a difference of 4.1 minutes.

Ankeny holds about 1.7% of Iowa's population but accounts for roughly 2.1% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Ankeny would save about 70 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,175 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)
Ankeny	21.1 min	42.1 min	175 hrs/yr	$5,439	3,027
Iowa	17.0 min	33.9 min	141 hrs/yr	$4,382	606
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.

Ankeny Commute Map

On average, it takes 21.1 minutes to get to work in Ankeny. That's 6% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM, followed by 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 19.4% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Ankeny

Public transit is unusually rare in Ankeny: 3.0 times less than the Iowa average (0.2% vs 0.7%).

Biking is unusually rare in Ankeny: 3.2 times less than the Iowa average (0.1% vs 0.3%).

Commute Mode Trends in Ankeny, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Ankeny 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	Taxi	Motorcycle	Bicycle
2009	92.5%	4.0%	1.2%	0.4%	1.2%	0.0%	0.3%	0.3%
2010	92.2%	4.6%	1.2%	0.7%	0.9%	0.1%	0.2%	0.2%
2011	92.8%	4.4%	0.7%	0.6%	1.1%	0.0%	0.1%	0.2%
2012	93.4%	4.0%	0.7%	0.7%	0.8%	0.0%	0.1%	0.3%
2013	93.5%	4.1%	0.8%	0.7%	0.5%	0.0%	0.1%	0.3%
2014	93.6%	3.9%	0.9%	0.7%	0.5%	0.0%	0.0%	0.4%
2015	94.4%	3.2%	1.1%	0.4%	0.5%	0.0%	0.0%	0.4%
2016	93.8%	3.0%	1.7%	0.4%	0.6%	0.0%	0.1%	0.4%
2017	92.7%	4.1%	2.0%	0.2%	0.7%	0.0%	0.0%	0.3%
2018	91.8%	4.9%	2.0%	0.3%	0.8%	0.0%	0.0%	0.2%
2019	92.0%	4.9%	1.8%	0.3%	0.8%	0.0%	0.0%	0.2%
2020	90.0%	7.0%	1.4%	0.4%	1.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%
2021	86.5%	11.5%	0.9%	0.4%	0.6%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%
2022	83.6%	14.7%	0.6%	0.5%	0.4%	0.1%	0.0%	0.1%
2023	82.2%	15.6%	0.9%	0.7%	0.4%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%
2024	78.4%	19.4%	1.0%	0.6%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share peaked in 2015 at 94.4%. Overall it fell from 92.5% in 2009 to 78.4% in 2024, down 14.1 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 5 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Ankeny: its share of workers rose from 4.0% in 2009 to 19.4% in 2024, up 15.4 percentage points. Most of that increase, 14.5 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Public transit lost the most ground, falling from 1.2% to 0.2% of workers (down 1.0 percentage points).

Commute Start Times in Ankeny

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Ankeny?

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

12:00-4:59 AM		3.1%
5:00-5:29 AM		2.2%
5:30-5:59 AM		4.4%
6:00-6:29 AM		6.6%
6:30-6:59 AM		12.1%
7:00-7:29 AM		20.5%
7:30-7:59 AM		18.0%
8:00-8:29 AM		10.2%
8:30-8:59 AM		4.3%
9:00-9:59 AM		3.6%
10:00-10:59 AM		1.6%
11:00-11:59 AM		1.5%
12:00-3:59 PM		6.3%
4:00-11:59 PM		5.5%

Ankeny Iowa Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Ankeny is 7:00-7:29 AM, when 20.5% of commuters leave home, compared with 15.1% across Iowa. Early starts are less common than in Iowa: 9.8% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 14.9% there. The morning rush is more concentrated than in Iowa: 60.9% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 51.0% there. About 1 in 5 commuters (18.4%) 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 Ankeny, 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 Ankeny 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 Ankeny next to Iowa 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	Ankeny	Iowa	United States
2009	7:30 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:31 AM	7:34 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:29 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:28 AM	7:34 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:26 AM	7:34 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:27 AM	7:33 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:28 AM	7:32 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:32 AM	7:32 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:33 AM	7:32 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:34 AM	7:31 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:32 AM	7:31 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:32 AM	7:31 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:29 AM	7:31 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:29 AM	7:31 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:29 AM	7:31 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:32 AM	7:31 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Ankeny were on the road by 7:32 AM, 2 minutes later than in 2009 (7:30 AM). That goes against the trend across Iowa, where the typical commuter now leaves 3 minutes earlier than in 2009. Commuters in Ankeny now leave 6 minutes earlier than the typical American commuter (7:38 AM).

How does Ankeny's commute time compare?

Metric	Ankeny	Iowa	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	21.1 min	17.0 min	22.4 min
Departure Window	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM
Secondary Departure Window	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	19.4%	11.3%	15.0%
Walked	1.0%	2.9%	2.4%
Public Transit	0.2%	0.7%	3.2%

The average commute time in Ankeny is 21.1 minutes, longer than the 17.0 minutes in Iowa.

0.2% commute by public transit, lower than the 0.7% in Iowa. 1.0% commute by walking, lower than the 2.9% in Iowa.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Ankeny, IA Commute Compared With Nearby Cities

How Ankeny, IA compares with the 1 cities closest to it.

Area	Population	One-way commute	Work from home	Typical departure
Ankeny, IA	54,055	21.1 min #2/2	19.4% #1/2	7:32 AM #1/2
Johnston, IA	20,666	20.4 min	14.4%	7:42 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Ankeny, Iowa.

Is living in Ankeny, Iowa good for avoiding long commute costs?

Commuters here spend an estimated 175 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $5,439 at a typical national wage. That's 24% more than the typical Iowa commuter spends.

When is peak congestion during the morning commute in Ankeny, Iowa?

Traffic peaks between 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM in Ankeny, Iowa. Leaving before or after this window is the single easiest way to avoid the heaviest local congestion, though 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM also sees a secondary bump.

Is public transportation a realistic commute option in Ankeny, Iowa?

Public transit usage is significantly lower here than typical: about 0.2% of commuters use it versus 0.7% in Iowa, meaning a personal vehicle is essential for most workers.

Is Ankeny, Iowa a good location for remote and hybrid workers?

About 19.4% of workers here already work from home. Working from home just 2 days a week in Ankeny would save about 70 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,175 at the same national wage assumption used above.