Brown County Commute Time Map & Patterns

Commute Time Burden in Brown County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Brown County spend about 27 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 112 hours, about 4.7 full days, spent commuting. That is 22% less time on the road than the Kansas average of 17.2 minutes each way, a difference of 3.8 minutes.

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

Working from home just 2 days a week in Brown County would save about 45 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,387 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)
Brown County	13.4 min	26.8 min	112 hrs/yr	$3,467	228
Kansas	17.2 min	34.4 min	143 hrs/yr	$4,448	662
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: Kansas Counties

Compare commute times among different counties

N

On average, it takes 13.4 minutes to get to work in Brown County. That's 40% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM, followed by 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 7.1% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Brown County

• Car: 87.8%
• Worked at Home: 7.1%
• Walked: 3.4%
• Other: 1.3%
• Motorcycle: 0.2%
• Taxi: 0.2%
• Public Transportation: < 0.1% unusually low
• Bicycle: < 0.1% unusually low

Public transit is unusually rare in Brown County: 8.4 times less than the Kansas average (0.0% vs 0.4%).

Biking is essentially absent in Brown County, versus 0.3% in Kansas.

Commute Mode Trends in Brown County, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Brown 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
• Taxi
• Motorcycle
• Public Transportation
• Bicycle

Show commute mode data by year

Year	Car	Worked at Home	Walked	Other	Taxi	Motorcycle	Public Transportation	Bicycle
2009	85.7%	7.0%	5.0%	1.4%	0.0%	0.7%	0.1%	0.0%
2010	87.0%	6.2%	4.1%	1.7%	0.1%	0.5%	0.4%	0.0%
2011	88.7%	5.3%	3.9%	1.1%	0.0%	0.6%	0.4%	0.0%
2012	87.9%	5.5%	3.9%	1.1%	0.0%	0.7%	0.7%	0.2%
2013	88.7%	6.6%	3.6%	0.3%	0.0%	0.1%	0.5%	0.2%
2014	89.1%	7.0%	2.9%	0.3%	0.0%	0.1%	0.5%	0.2%
2015	89.0%	7.0%	3.2%	0.3%	0.0%	0.1%	0.2%	0.2%
2016	89.0%	6.7%	3.4%	0.4%	0.0%	0.1%	0.2%	0.3%
2017	88.7%	7.1%	3.7%	0.3%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%	0.1%
2018	88.8%	6.8%	3.4%	0.5%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.6%
2019	86.6%	7.8%	4.4%	0.8%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.5%
2020	86.2%	7.4%	4.8%	1.2%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.3%
2021	86.5%	7.1%	4.5%	1.5%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%	0.3%
2022	86.5%	7.0%	4.6%	1.5%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.3%
2023	88.7%	6.5%	3.1%	1.7%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2024	87.8%	7.1%	3.4%	1.3%	0.2%	0.2%	0.0%	0.0%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share peaked in 2014 at 89.1%. Overall it rose from 85.7% in 2009 to 87.8% in 2024, up 2.1 percentage points. It has fallen in the latest release.

Walking lost the most ground, falling from 5.0% to 3.4% of workers (down 1.6 percentage points).

Commute Start Times in Brown County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Brown County?

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

12:00-4:59 AM	12:00-4:59 AM Brown County4.5% Kansas4.7%	4.5%
5:00-5:29 AM	5:00-5:29 AM Brown County3.7% Kansas3.5%	3.7%
5:30-5:59 AM	5:30-5:59 AM Brown County5.9% Kansas5.2%	5.9%
6:00-6:29 AM	6:00-6:29 AM Brown County6.0% Kansas7.6%	6.0%
6:30-6:59 AM	6:30-6:59 AM Brown County11.0% Kansas10.3%	11.0%
7:00-7:29 AM	7:00-7:29 AM Brown County17.9% Kansas14.9%	17.9%
7:30-7:59 AM	7:30-7:59 AM Brown County25.2% Kansas16.8%	25.2%
8:00-8:29 AM	8:00-8:29 AM Brown County7.5% Kansas10.4%	7.5%
8:30-8:59 AM	8:30-8:59 AM Brown County2.2% Kansas4.5%	2.2%
9:00-9:59 AM	9:00-9:59 AM Brown County2.6% Kansas5.0%	2.6%
10:00-10:59 AM	10:00-10:59 AM Brown County1.9% Kansas2.5%	1.9%
11:00-11:59 AM	11:00-11:59 AM Brown County0.7% Kansas1.1%	0.7%
12:00-3:59 PM	12:00-3:59 PM Brown County5.5% Kansas7.0%	5.5%
4:00-11:59 PM	4:00-11:59 PM Brown County5.5% Kansas6.6%	5.5%

Brown County Kansas Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Brown County is 7:30-7:59 AM, when 25.2% of commuters leave home, compared with 16.8% across Kansas. Early starts are about as common as in Kansas: 14.1% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 13.5% there. The morning rush is more concentrated than in Kansas: 61.6% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 52.3% there. About 1 in 6 commuters (16.1%) 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 Brown 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 Brown 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 Brown County next to Kansas 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.

• Brown County
• Kansas
• United States

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Brown County	Kansas	United States
2009	7:37 AM	7:39 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:41 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:34 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:33 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:33 AM	7:38 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:33 AM	7:38 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:25 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:27 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:27 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:28 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:31 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:36 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:39 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:38 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:35 AM	7:37 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:31 AM	7:37 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Brown County were on the road by 7:31 AM, 6 minutes earlier than in 2009 (7:37 AM). The shift is sharper than across Kansas, where the typical start moved 2 minutes earlier. Commuters in Brown County now leave 7 minutes earlier than the typical American commuter (7:38 AM).

How does Brown County's commute time compare?

Metric	Brown County	Kansas	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	13.4 min	17.2 min	22.4 min
Departure Window	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM
Secondary Departure Window	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	7.1%	11.8%	15.0%
Walked	3.4%	2.3%	2.4%
Public Transit	< 0.1%	0.4%	3.2%

The average commute time in Brown County is 13.4 minutes, shorter than the 17.2 minutes in Kansas.

0.0% commute by public transit, lower than the 0.4% in Kansas. 3.4% commute by walking, higher than the 2.3% in Kansas.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau