Oak Park Commute Time Map & Patterns

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

You 10/21/26, 8:07 PM

How long is the round-trip commute in Oak Park?

Map AI 10/21/26, 8:07 PM

Commute Time Burden in Oak Park: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Oak Park spend about 65 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 269 hours, about 11.2 full days, spent commuting. That is 37% more time on the road than the Illinois average of 23.6 minutes each way, a difference of 8.6 minutes.

Oak Park holds about 0.4% of Illinois's population but accounts for roughly 0.6% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Oak Park would save about 108 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $3,334 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)
Oak Park	32.3 min	64.5 min	269 hrs/yr	$8,336	5,309
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.

Oak Park Commute Map

On average, it takes 32.3 minutes to get to work in Oak Park. That's 44% longer than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 08:00 AM – 08:29 AM, followed by 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 31.0% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Oak Park

Driving is 33% less common in Oak Park than the Illinois average (49.3% vs 73.7%).

Commute Mode Trends in Oak Park, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Oak Park 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	Walked	Bicycle	Other	Taxi	Motorcycle
2009	66.4%	5.6%	21.4%	4.1%	1.0%	1.0%	0.3%	0.2%
2010	65.6%	6.1%	21.8%	3.9%	1.3%	0.9%	0.2%	0.1%
2011	64.6%	6.3%	22.6%	3.8%	1.5%	0.8%	0.3%	0.1%
2012	64.1%	7.0%	22.5%	3.7%	1.7%	0.8%	0.2%	0.0%
2013	65.4%	7.2%	21.4%	3.6%	1.7%	0.7%	0.0%	0.1%
2014	63.1%	8.0%	23.5%	3.5%	1.3%	0.6%	0.0%	0.1%
2015	62.6%	7.5%	24.8%	3.4%	1.1%	0.6%	0.0%	0.1%
2016	61.9%	7.6%	24.7%	3.4%	1.5%	0.8%	0.0%	0.1%
2017	61.6%	7.5%	26.0%	2.9%	1.3%	0.7%	0.0%	0.1%
2018	59.9%	8.0%	27.3%	2.7%	1.1%	0.9%	0.0%	0.1%
2019	60.4%	7.6%	26.9%	2.8%	1.3%	0.8%	0.1%	0.0%
2020	58.3%	11.8%	24.1%	3.6%	1.2%	0.8%	0.1%	0.0%
2021	54.7%	18.2%	21.5%	4.1%	0.9%	0.4%	0.2%	0.0%
2022	52.4%	22.6%	18.8%	4.2%	1.0%	0.5%	0.2%	0.2%
2023	49.4%	27.7%	16.2%	4.7%	1.2%	0.5%	0.2%	0.2%
2024	49.3%	31.0%	13.1%	4.3%	1.6%	0.3%	0.2%	0.2%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Overall its share fell from 66.4% in 2009 to 49.3% in 2024, down 17.1 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 5 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Oak Park: its share of workers rose from 5.6% in 2009 to 31.0% in 2024, up 25.4 percentage points. Most of that increase, 23.4 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Public transit lost the most ground, falling from 21.4% to 13.1% of workers (down 8.3 percentage points).

Working from home overtook public transit to become the 2nd most common choice in the 2022 release and has stayed ahead since.

Commute Start Times in Oak Park

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Oak Park?

The bars show when commuters in Oak Park 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		2.0%
5:00-5:29 AM		1.9%
5:30-5:59 AM		2.7%
6:00-6:29 AM		6.3%
6:30-6:59 AM		7.9%
7:00-7:29 AM		12.5%
7:30-7:59 AM		17.1%
8:00-8:29 AM		20.5%
8:30-8:59 AM		8.0%
9:00-9:59 AM		7.3%
10:00-10:59 AM		3.7%
11:00-11:59 AM		1.3%
12:00-3:59 PM		5.9%
4:00-11:59 PM		3.0%

Oak Park Illinois Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Oak Park is 8:00-8:29 AM, when 20.5% of commuters leave home, compared with 11.2% across Illinois. Early starts are less common than in Illinois: 6.6% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 14.8% there. The morning rush is more concentrated than in Illinois: 58.0% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 46.5% there. About 1 in 5 commuters (21.2%) 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 Oak Park, 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 Oak Park 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 Oak Park 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.

Median time commuters leave home, by ACS 5-year release year. Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Oak Park	Illinois	United States
2009	7:51 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:54 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:52 AM	7:36 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:52 AM	7:36 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:50 AM	7:36 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:51 AM	7:36 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:49 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:49 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:50 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:52 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:52 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:54 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:57 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:56 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:56 AM	7:36 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:59 AM	7:36 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Oak Park were on the road by 7:59 AM, 8 minutes later than in 2009 (7:51 AM). The shift is sharper than across Illinois, where the typical start moved 1 minute later. Commuters in Oak Park now leave 22 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 Oak Park has moved 8 minutes later. The 2024 release is the latest typical start for Oak Park in the whole series.

How does Oak Park's commute time compare?

Metric	Oak Park	Illinois	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	32.3 min	23.6 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	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	31.0%	15.9%	15.0%
Walked	4.3%	2.8%	2.4%
Public Transit	13.1%	5.8%	3.2%

The average commute time in Oak Park is 32.3 minutes, longer than the 23.6 minutes in Illinois.

13.1% commute by public transit, higher than the 5.8% in Illinois. 4.3% commute by walking, higher than the 2.8% in Illinois.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Oak Park, IL Commute Compared With Nearby Cities

Oak Park, IL is typical in size for this group, 53,290 residents against a local median of 55,595, so the measures below are close to a like for like comparison. The measure that sets Oak Park, IL apart most is work from home: 31.0%, 154% above the local median of 12.2%.

The cities themselves sit within 8.1% of each other on work from home, a tighter band than the gap between any of them and Oak Park, IL, which makes it a genuine outlier here rather than one end of a wide local spread. Oak Park, IL has the highest work from home of the 4 areas compared here.

Area	Population	One-way commute	Work from home	Typical departure
Oak Park, IL	53,290	32.3 min #4/4	31.0% #1/4	7:59 AM #4/4
Berwyn, IL	55,595	28.3 min	12.2%	7:41 AM
Elmwood Park, IL	23,868	32.0 min	13.7%	7:21 AM
Cicero, IL	82,796	30.3 min	5.5%	7:23 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Oak Park, Illinois.

What is the financial impact of commuting in Oak Park, Illinois?

Commuters here spend an estimated 269 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $8,336 at a typical national wage. That's 37% more than the typical Illinois commuter spends.

What are the busiest morning travel hours in Oak Park, Illinois?

Traffic peaks between 08:00 AM – 08:29 AM in Oak Park, Illinois. 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.

How much money can remote workers save in Oak Park, Illinois?

About 31.0% of workers here already work from home. Working from home just 2 days a week in Oak Park would save about 108 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $3,334 at the same national wage assumption used above.