Shawnee County Commute Time Map & Patterns

Commute Time Burden in Shawnee County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Shawnee County spend about 32 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 135 hours, about 5.6 full days, spent commuting. That is 6% less time on the road than the Kansas average of 17.2 minutes each way, a difference of 1.0 minutes.

Shawnee County holds about 6.0% of Kansas's population but accounts for roughly 5.7% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Shawnee County would save about 54 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,678 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)
Shawnee County	16.2 min	32.5 min	135 hrs/yr	$4,194	1,198
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 16.2 minutes to get to work in Shawnee County. That's 28% 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 11.2% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Shawnee County

• Car: 85.9%
• Worked at Home: 11.2%
• Walked: 1.6%
• Other: 0.8%
• Public Transportation: 0.3%
• Motorcycle: < 0.1%
• Bicycle: < 0.1% unusually low
• Taxi: < 0.1% unusually low

Taking a taxi is essentially absent in Shawnee County, versus 0.2% in Kansas.

Biking is unusually rare in Shawnee County: 5.0 times less than the Kansas average (0.1% vs 0.3%).

Commute Mode Trends in Shawnee County, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Shawnee 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
• Motorcycle
• Bicycle
• Taxi

Show commute mode data by year

Year	Car	Worked at Home	Walked	Other	Public Transportation	Motorcycle	Bicycle	Taxi
2009	93.4%	2.9%	1.6%	0.5%	1.0%	0.3%	0.3%	0.1%
2010	93.3%	2.9%	1.6%	0.5%	1.0%	0.3%	0.3%	0.0%
2011	93.4%	3.0%	1.6%	0.3%	0.9%	0.3%	0.3%	0.1%
2012	93.6%	3.1%	1.6%	0.3%	0.7%	0.3%	0.3%	0.1%
2013	93.3%	3.0%	1.9%	0.4%	0.7%	0.2%	0.3%	0.1%
2014	93.4%	3.0%	1.8%	0.6%	0.7%	0.2%	0.3%	0.0%
2015	93.5%	2.9%	1.6%	0.8%	0.7%	0.2%	0.3%	0.1%
2016	93.2%	2.9%	1.7%	0.9%	1.0%	0.2%	0.2%	0.0%
2017	92.9%	2.9%	1.9%	1.0%	0.9%	0.2%	0.3%	0.0%
2018	93.2%	3.0%	1.6%	0.7%	1.0%	0.1%	0.3%	0.0%
2019	93.0%	3.2%	1.6%	0.7%	1.2%	0.1%	0.1%	0.0%
2020	91.1%	5.1%	1.8%	0.7%	1.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.0%
2021	89.3%	7.4%	1.4%	0.6%	1.0%	0.1%	0.1%	0.0%
2022	87.9%	9.2%	1.3%	0.7%	0.9%	0.1%	0.1%	0.0%
2023	86.7%	10.1%	1.7%	0.7%	0.6%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2024	85.9%	11.2%	1.6%	0.8%	0.3%	0.1%	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 2012 at 93.6%. Overall it fell from 93.4% in 2009 to 85.9% in 2024, down 7.5 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 6 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Shawnee County: its share of workers rose from 2.9% in 2009 to 11.2% in 2024, up 8.3 percentage points. Most of that increase, 8.0 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Public transit lost the most ground, falling from 1.0% to 0.3% of workers (down 0.7 percentage points).

Commute Start Times in Shawnee County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Shawnee County?

The bars show when commuters in Shawnee 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 Shawnee County3.0% Kansas4.7%	3.0%
5:00-5:29 AM	5:00-5:29 AM Shawnee County3.1% Kansas3.5%	3.1%
5:30-5:59 AM	5:30-5:59 AM Shawnee County4.6% Kansas5.2%	4.6%
6:00-6:29 AM	6:00-6:29 AM Shawnee County7.7% Kansas7.6%	7.7%
6:30-6:59 AM	6:30-6:59 AM Shawnee County10.1% Kansas10.3%	10.1%
7:00-7:29 AM	7:00-7:29 AM Shawnee County15.0% Kansas14.9%	15.0%
7:30-7:59 AM	7:30-7:59 AM Shawnee County20.6% Kansas16.8%	20.6%
8:00-8:29 AM	8:00-8:29 AM Shawnee County10.2% Kansas10.4%	10.2%
8:30-8:59 AM	8:30-8:59 AM Shawnee County4.1% Kansas4.5%	4.1%
9:00-9:59 AM	9:00-9:59 AM Shawnee County3.9% Kansas5.0%	3.9%
10:00-10:59 AM	10:00-10:59 AM Shawnee County2.3% Kansas2.5%	2.3%
11:00-11:59 AM	11:00-11:59 AM Shawnee County1.3% Kansas1.1%	1.3%
12:00-3:59 PM	12:00-3:59 PM Shawnee County6.8% Kansas7.0%	6.8%
4:00-11:59 PM	4:00-11:59 PM Shawnee County7.4% Kansas6.6%	7.4%

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

The busiest time to head out in Shawnee County is 7:30-7:59 AM, when 20.6% of commuters leave home, compared with 16.8% across Kansas. Early starts are less common than in Kansas: 10.7% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 13.5% there. The morning rush is more concentrated than in Kansas: 55.8% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 52.3% there. About 1 in 5 commuters (21.7%) 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 Shawnee 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 Shawnee 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 Shawnee 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.

• Shawnee County
• Kansas
• United States

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Shawnee County	Kansas	United States
2009	7:39 AM	7:39 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:40 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:39 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:40 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:40 AM	7:38 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:42 AM	7:38 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:42 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	7:41 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:39 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:38 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:39 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:41 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:40 AM	7:37 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:40 AM	7:37 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Shawnee County were on the road by 7:40 AM, almost exactly the same as in 2009. Across Kansas, meanwhile, the typical commuter now leaves 2 minutes earlier than in 2009. Commuters in Shawnee County now leave 2 minutes later than the typical American commuter (7:38 AM).

How does Shawnee County's commute time compare?

Metric	Shawnee County	Kansas	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	16.2 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	11.2%	11.8%	15.0%
Walked	1.6%	2.3%	2.4%
Public Transit	0.3%	0.4%	3.2%

The average commute time in Shawnee County is 16.2 minutes, shorter than the 17.2 minutes in Kansas.

0.3% commute by public transit, lower than the 0.4% in Kansas. 1.6% commute by walking, lower than the 2.3% in Kansas.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau