Lee County Commute Time Map & Patterns

Commute Time Burden in Lee County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Lee County spend about 36 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 149 hours, about 6.2 full days, spent commuting. That is 24% less time on the road than the Illinois average of 23.6 minutes each way, a difference of 5.7 minutes.

Lee County holds about 0.3% of Illinois's population but accounts for roughly 0.2% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Lee County would save about 60 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,851 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)
Lee County	17.9 min	35.8 min	149 hrs/yr	$4,629	537
Illinois	23.6 min	47.3 min	197 hrs/yr	$6,104	1,547
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.

Commute Time Map: Illinois Counties

Compare commute times among different counties

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On average, it takes 17.9 minutes to get to work in Lee County. That's 20% 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 5.5% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Lee County

• Car: 91.5% unusually high
• Worked at Home: 5.5%
• Walked: 1.2%
• Other: 0.9%
• Public Transportation: 0.6% unusually low
• Bicycle: 0.2%
• Motorcycle: < 0.1%
• Taxi: < 0.1% unusually low

Driving is 24% more common in Lee County than the Illinois average (91.5% vs 73.7%).

Public transit is unusually rare in Lee County: 9.8 times less than the Illinois average (0.6% vs 5.8%).

Taking a taxi is essentially absent in Lee County, versus 0.3% in Illinois.

Commute Mode Trends in Lee County, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Lee County 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.

• Car
• Worked at Home
• Walked
• Other
• Public Transportation
• Bicycle
• Motorcycle
• Taxi

Show commute mode data by year

Year	Car	Worked at Home	Walked	Other	Public Transportation	Bicycle	Motorcycle	Taxi
2009	88.6%	5.8%	2.2%	0.3%	2.0%	0.7%	0.1%	0.3%
2010	91.1%	4.9%	1.6%	0.4%	1.5%	0.3%	0.0%	0.2%
2011	91.5%	4.2%	1.7%	0.5%	1.4%	0.3%	0.1%	0.2%
2012	91.8%	4.4%	1.7%	0.6%	1.2%	0.2%	0.1%	0.0%
2013	92.8%	3.7%	1.9%	0.5%	0.7%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%
2014	93.0%	3.8%	1.8%	0.5%	0.5%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%
2015	92.5%	4.0%	2.0%	0.7%	0.4%	0.1%	0.0%	0.2%
2016	91.7%	4.6%	2.0%	0.9%	0.3%	0.2%	0.0%	0.3%
2017	92.2%	4.2%	1.9%	0.6%	0.5%	0.2%	0.0%	0.3%
2018	92.8%	3.8%	1.5%	1.0%	0.6%	0.1%	0.0%	0.2%
2019	93.9%	3.2%	1.3%	0.7%	0.4%	0.2%	0.1%	0.3%
2020	92.8%	4.2%	1.1%	1.0%	0.6%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%
2021	93.1%	3.8%	1.3%	0.7%	0.8%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%
2022	92.3%	4.9%	1.1%	0.7%	0.7%	0.2%	0.0%	0.1%
2023	91.5%	5.3%	1.2%	0.8%	0.8%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%
2024	91.5%	5.5%	1.2%	0.9%	0.6%	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 2019 at 93.9%. Overall it rose from 88.6% in 2009 to 91.5% in 2024, up 2.9 percentage points.

Public transit lost the most ground, falling from 2.0% to 0.6% of workers (down 1.4 percentage points).

Commute Start Times in Lee County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Lee County?

The bars show when commuters in Lee County 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 Illinois for comparison. Hover over or tap a row for the exact numbers.

12:00-4:59 AM	12:00-4:59 AM Lee County9.0% Illinois5.6%	9.0%
5:00-5:29 AM	5:00-5:29 AM Lee County6.0% Illinois4.3%	6.0%
5:30-5:59 AM	5:30-5:59 AM Lee County5.5% Illinois4.9%	5.5%
6:00-6:29 AM	6:00-6:29 AM Lee County11.0% Illinois9.0%	11.0%
6:30-6:59 AM	6:30-6:59 AM Lee County11.4% Illinois9.4%	11.4%
7:00-7:29 AM	7:00-7:29 AM Lee County13.9% Illinois14.3%	13.9%
7:30-7:59 AM	7:30-7:59 AM Lee County13.1% Illinois11.6%	13.1%
8:00-8:29 AM	8:00-8:29 AM Lee County6.7% Illinois11.2%	6.7%
8:30-8:59 AM	8:30-8:59 AM Lee County3.0% Illinois5.2%	3.0%
9:00-9:59 AM	9:00-9:59 AM Lee County2.5% Illinois6.1%	2.5%
10:00-10:59 AM	10:00-10:59 AM Lee County2.5% Illinois2.9%	2.5%
11:00-11:59 AM	11:00-11:59 AM Lee County0.5% Illinois1.5%	0.5%
12:00-3:59 PM	12:00-3:59 PM Lee County9.3% Illinois7.7%	9.3%
4:00-11:59 PM	4:00-11:59 PM Lee County5.7% Illinois6.3%	5.7%

Lee County Illinois Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Lee County is 7:00-7:29 AM, when 13.9% of commuters leave home, compared with 14.3% across Illinois. Early starts are more common than in Illinois: 20.4% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 14.8% there. The morning rush looks much like Illinois's: 45.0% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 46.5% there. About 1 in 5 commuters (20.6%) 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 Lee County, 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 Lee County 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 Lee County next to Illinois 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.

• Lee County
• Illinois
• United States

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Lee County	Illinois	United States
2009	7:27 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:25 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:19 AM	7:36 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:21 AM	7:36 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:21 AM	7:36 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:20 AM	7:36 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:22 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:22 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:20 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:19 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:20 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:21 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:18 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:17 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:19 AM	7:36 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:16 AM	7:36 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Lee County were on the road by 7:16 AM, 12 minutes earlier than in 2009 (7:27 AM). That goes against the trend across Illinois, where the typical commuter now leaves 1 minute later than in 2009. Commuters in Lee County now leave 22 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 Lee County has moved 4 minutes earlier. The 2024 release is the earliest typical start for Lee County in the whole series.

How does Lee County's commute time compare?

Metric	Lee County	Illinois	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	17.9 min	23.6 min	22.4 min
Departure Window	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM
Secondary Departure Window	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	5.5%	15.9%	15.0%
Walked	1.2%	2.8%	2.4%
Public Transit	0.6%	5.8%	3.2%

The average commute time in Lee County is 17.9 minutes, shorter than the 23.6 minutes in Illinois.

0.6% commute by public transit, lower than the 5.8% in Illinois. 1.2% commute by walking, lower than the 2.8% in Illinois.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau