Bell County Commute Time Map & Patterns

Commute Time Burden in Bell County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Bell 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 14% less time on the road than the Kentucky average of 20.8 minutes each way, a difference of 2.9 minutes.

Bell County holds about 0.5% of Kentucky's population but accounts for roughly 0.4% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Bell County would save about 60 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,847 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)
Bell County	17.9 min	35.7 min	149 hrs/yr	$4,617	157
Kentucky	20.8 min	41.6 min	173 hrs/yr	$5,369	832
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: Kentucky Counties

Compare commute times among different counties

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On average, it takes 17.9 minutes to get to work in Bell County. That's 20% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

Faster than 82% of counties in Kentucky

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 walking. About 4.4% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Bell County

• Car: 89.0%
• Walked: 5.6%
• Worked at Home: 4.4%
• Other: 0.5%
• Public Transportation: 0.3%
• Bicycle: 0.3%
• Motorcycle: < 0.1% unusually low
• Taxi: < 0.1% unusually low

Riding a motorcycle is essentially absent in Bell County, versus 0.1% in Kentucky.

Taking a taxi is essentially absent in Bell County, versus 0.1% in Kentucky.

Commute Mode Trends in Bell County, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Bell 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
• Walked
• Worked at Home
• Other
• Public Transportation
• Bicycle
• Taxi
• Motorcycle

Show commute mode data by year

Year	Car	Walked	Worked at Home	Other	Public Transportation	Bicycle	Taxi	Motorcycle
2009	93.1%	3.4%	2.4%	0.6%	0.3%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%
2010	92.9%	3.0%	2.5%	0.4%	0.5%	0.5%	0.0%	0.1%
2011	94.2%	2.6%	1.9%	0.0%	0.6%	0.6%	0.0%	0.1%
2012	93.5%	3.4%	1.8%	0.0%	0.7%	0.5%	0.0%	0.1%
2013	94.0%	3.3%	1.7%	0.0%	0.6%	0.4%	0.0%	0.0%
2014	91.5%	4.0%	2.8%	1.0%	0.1%	0.7%	0.0%	0.0%
2015	91.7%	3.5%	3.1%	1.2%	0.2%	0.3%	0.0%	0.0%
2016	90.7%	3.7%	3.4%	1.5%	0.3%	0.3%	0.0%	0.0%
2017	91.4%	2.9%	2.9%	2.2%	0.1%	0.4%	0.0%	0.0%
2018	91.8%	2.5%	2.8%	2.2%	0.3%	0.5%	0.0%	0.0%
2019	93.6%	2.4%	2.3%	1.3%	0.3%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2020	91.2%	3.9%	3.5%	1.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2021	90.5%	4.9%	3.8%	0.6%	0.1%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2022	91.2%	4.3%	4.2%	0.1%	0.0%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2023	91.5%	4.4%	3.4%	0.3%	0.0%	0.4%	0.0%	0.0%
2024	89.0%	5.6%	4.4%	0.5%	0.3%	0.3%	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 2011 at 94.2%. Overall it fell from 93.1% in 2009 to 89.0% in 2024, down 4.1 percentage points. It has fallen in the latest release.

Walking gained the most ground in Bell County: its share of workers rose from 3.4% in 2009 to 5.6% in 2024, up 2.2 percentage points. Most of that increase, 3.2 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Commute Start Times in Bell County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Bell County?

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

12:00-4:59 AM	12:00-4:59 AM Bell County6.5% Kentucky5.9%	6.5%
5:00-5:29 AM	5:00-5:29 AM Bell County2.9% Kentucky4.3%	2.9%
5:30-5:59 AM	5:30-5:59 AM Bell County8.7% Kentucky5.3%	8.7%
6:00-6:29 AM	6:00-6:29 AM Bell County5.7% Kentucky8.3%	5.7%
6:30-6:59 AM	6:30-6:59 AM Bell County10.8% Kentucky10.3%	10.8%
7:00-7:29 AM	7:00-7:29 AM Bell County14.4% Kentucky14.8%	14.4%
7:30-7:59 AM	7:30-7:59 AM Bell County14.0% Kentucky12.4%	14.0%
8:00-8:29 AM	8:00-8:29 AM Bell County7.8% Kentucky9.6%	7.8%
8:30-8:59 AM	8:30-8:59 AM Bell County5.7% Kentucky4.5%	5.7%
9:00-9:59 AM	9:00-9:59 AM Bell County5.9% Kentucky5.2%	5.9%
10:00-10:59 AM	10:00-10:59 AM Bell County1.1% Kentucky2.5%	1.1%
11:00-11:59 AM	11:00-11:59 AM Bell County0.0% Kentucky1.3%	0.0%
12:00-3:59 PM	12:00-3:59 PM Bell County10.0% Kentucky7.3%	10.0%
4:00-11:59 PM	4:00-11:59 PM Bell County6.6% Kentucky8.4%	6.6%

Bell County Kentucky Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Bell County is 7:00-7:29 AM, when 14.4% of commuters leave home, compared with 14.8% across Kentucky. Early starts are more common than in Kentucky: 18.1% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 15.5% there. The morning rush looks much like Kentucky's: 47.0% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 47.1% there. About 1 in 4 commuters (23.6%) 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 Bell 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 Bell 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 Bell County next to Kentucky 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.

• Bell County
• Kentucky
• United States

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Bell County	Kentucky	United States
2009	7:38 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:34 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:30 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:34 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:30 AM	7:35 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:32 AM	7:35 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:39 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:49 AM	7:34 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:49 AM	7:34 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:45 AM	7:34 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:44 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:40 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:37 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:28 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:33 AM	7:32 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:32 AM	7:33 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Bell County were on the road by 7:32 AM, 6 minutes earlier than in 2009 (7:38 AM). The shift is sharper than across Kentucky, where the typical start moved 2 minutes earlier. Commuters in Bell County now leave 6 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 Bell County has moved 12 minutes earlier.

How does Bell County's commute time compare?

Metric	Bell County	Kentucky	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	17.9 min	20.8 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	4.4%	10.2%	15.0%
Walked	5.6%	2.0%	2.4%
Public Transit	0.3%	0.6%	3.2%

The average commute time in Bell County is 17.9 minutes, shorter than the 20.8 minutes in Kentucky.

0.3% commute by public transit, lower than the 0.6% in Kentucky. 5.6% commute by walking, higher than the 2.0% in Kentucky.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau