Seward County Commute Time Map & Patterns

Commute Time Burden in Seward County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Seward County spend about 23 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 94 hours, about 3.9 full days, spent commuting. That is 35% less time on the road than the Kansas average of 17.2 minutes each way, a difference of 5.9 minutes.

Seward County holds about 0.7% of Kansas's population but accounts for roughly 0.5% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Seward County would save about 38 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,165 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)
Seward County	11.3 min	22.5 min	94 hrs/yr	$2,912	456
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

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On average, it takes 11.3 minutes to get to work in Seward County. That's 50% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

Faster than 71% of counties in Kansas

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 3.4% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Seward County

• Car: 92.7%
• Worked at Home: 3.4% unusually low
• Walked: 1.9%
• Other: 1.8%
• Taxi: 0.2%
• Public Transportation: < 0.1% unusually low
• Bicycle: < 0.1% unusually low
• Motorcycle: < 0.1% unusually low

Riding a motorcycle is essentially absent in Seward County, versus 0.1% in Kansas.

Public transit is unusually rare in Seward County: 9.6 times less than the Kansas average (0.0% vs 0.4%).

Working from home is unusually rare in Seward County: 3.5 times less than the Kansas average (3.4% vs 11.8%).

Biking is unusually rare in Seward County: 14.1 times less than the Kansas average (0.0% vs 0.3%).

Commute Mode Trends in Seward County, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Seward 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
• Public Transportation
• Motorcycle
• Bicycle

Show commute mode data by year

Year	Car	Worked at Home	Walked	Other	Taxi	Public Transportation	Motorcycle	Bicycle
2009	91.9%	2.6%	3.2%	1.2%	0.0%	0.3%	0.4%	0.3%
2010	91.6%	3.1%	3.6%	1.0%	0.0%	0.4%	0.2%	0.2%
2011	91.1%	2.8%	3.2%	1.3%	0.1%	0.4%	0.2%	0.9%
2012	91.0%	3.0%	2.7%	1.3%	0.1%	0.3%	0.6%	1.1%
2013	90.7%	2.9%	3.2%	1.4%	0.1%	0.3%	0.7%	0.7%
2014	91.5%	3.6%	2.4%	1.0%	0.1%	0.1%	0.5%	0.8%
2015	91.7%	3.5%	2.1%	0.9%	0.0%	0.2%	0.4%	1.2%
2016	91.8%	3.3%	2.9%	1.0%	0.0%	0.2%	0.6%	0.2%
2017	91.6%	3.7%	3.0%	0.8%	0.0%	0.5%	0.2%	0.2%
2018	91.8%	3.6%	2.9%	0.9%	0.0%	0.4%	0.2%	0.3%
2019	92.4%	3.2%	2.7%	0.9%	0.0%	0.3%	0.2%	0.2%
2020	93.0%	2.6%	2.2%	1.6%	0.0%	0.1%	0.2%	0.2%
2021	92.3%	3.8%	1.8%	1.7%	0.0%	0.3%	0.1%	0.0%
2022	92.9%	3.4%	2.0%	1.6%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2023	93.5%	3.0%	1.9%	1.5%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2024	92.7%	3.4%	1.9%	1.8%	0.2%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share was highest in 2023 at 93.5% and lowest in 2013 at 90.7%. Overall it rose from 91.9% in 2009 to 92.7% in 2024, up 0.8 percentage points. It has fallen in the latest release.

Working from home gained the most ground in Seward County: its share of workers rose from 2.6% in 2009 to 3.4% in 2024, up 0.8 percentage points.

Walking lost the most ground, falling from 3.2% to 1.9% of workers (down 1.3 percentage points).

Working from home overtook walking to become the 2nd most common choice in the 2014 release and has stayed ahead since.

Commute Start Times in Seward County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Seward County?

The bars show when commuters in Seward 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 Seward County8.9% Kansas4.7%	8.9%
5:00-5:29 AM	5:00-5:29 AM Seward County8.1% Kansas3.5%	8.1%
5:30-5:59 AM	5:30-5:59 AM Seward County4.0% Kansas5.2%	4.0%
6:00-6:29 AM	6:00-6:29 AM Seward County7.2% Kansas7.6%	7.2%
6:30-6:59 AM	6:30-6:59 AM Seward County6.5% Kansas10.3%	6.5%
7:00-7:29 AM	7:00-7:29 AM Seward County15.5% Kansas14.9%	15.5%
7:30-7:59 AM	7:30-7:59 AM Seward County11.1% Kansas16.8%	11.1%
8:00-8:29 AM	8:00-8:29 AM Seward County8.2% Kansas10.4%	8.2%
8:30-8:59 AM	8:30-8:59 AM Seward County2.5% Kansas4.5%	2.5%
9:00-9:59 AM	9:00-9:59 AM Seward County3.5% Kansas5.0%	3.5%
10:00-10:59 AM	10:00-10:59 AM Seward County3.6% Kansas2.5%	3.6%
11:00-11:59 AM	11:00-11:59 AM Seward County1.2% Kansas1.1%	1.2%
12:00-3:59 PM	12:00-3:59 PM Seward County10.7% Kansas7.0%	10.7%
4:00-11:59 PM	4:00-11:59 PM Seward County9.0% Kansas6.6%	9.0%

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

The busiest time to head out in Seward County is 7:00-7:29 AM, when 15.5% of commuters leave home, compared with 14.9% across Kansas. Early starts are more common than in Kansas: 21.0% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 13.5% there. The morning rush is more spread out than in Kansas: 41.3% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 52.3% there. About 1 in 4 commuters (28.0%) 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 Seward 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 Seward 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 Seward 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.

• Seward County
• Kansas
• United States

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Seward County	Kansas	United States
2009	7:34 AM	7:39 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:38 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:37 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:37 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:41 AM	7:38 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:39 AM	7:38 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:37 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:42 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:41 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:32 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:28 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:20 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:20 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:17 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:27 AM	7:37 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:30 AM	7:37 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Seward County were on the road by 7:30 AM, 4 minutes earlier than in 2009 (7:34 AM). The shift is sharper than across Kansas, where the typical start moved 2 minutes earlier. Commuters in Seward County now leave 8 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 Seward County has moved 2 minutes later.

How does Seward County's commute time compare?

Metric	Seward County	Kansas	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	11.3 min	17.2 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	3.4%	11.8%	15.0%
Walked	1.9%	2.3%	2.4%
Public Transit	< 0.1%	0.4%	3.2%

The average commute time in Seward County is 11.3 minutes, shorter than the 17.2 minutes in Kansas.

0.0% commute by public transit, lower than the 0.4% in Kansas. 1.9% commute by walking, lower than the 2.3% in Kansas.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau