Boone County Commute Time Map & Patterns

Commute Time Burden in Boone County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Boone County spend about 44 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 182 hours, about 7.6 full days, spent commuting. That is 5% more time on the road than the Kentucky average of 20.8 minutes each way, a difference of 1.0 minutes.

Boone County holds about 3.1% of Kentucky's population but accounts for roughly 3.2% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Boone County would save about 73 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,251 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)
Boone County	21.8 min	43.6 min	182 hrs/yr	$5,627	2,491
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 21.8 minutes to get to work in Boone County. That's 3% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM, followed by 06:30 AM – 06:59 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 13.4% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Boone County

• Car: 84.4%
• Worked at Home: 13.4%
• Other: 1.4%
• Public Transportation: 0.4%
• Walked: 0.3% unusually low
• Taxi: 0.1%
• Bicycle: < 0.1%
• Motorcycle: < 0.1% unusually low

Riding a motorcycle is unusually rare in Boone County: 5.7 times less than the Kentucky average (0.0% vs 0.1%).

Walking is unusually rare in Boone County: 7.7 times less than the Kentucky average (0.3% vs 2.0%).

Few people walk or bike to work in Boone County: just 0.3%, 6.5 times below the Kentucky average of 2.2%.

Commute Mode Trends in Boone County, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Boone 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
• Other
• Public Transportation
• Walked
• Taxi
• Bicycle
• Motorcycle

Show commute mode data by year

Year	Car	Worked at Home	Other	Public Transportation	Walked	Taxi	Bicycle	Motorcycle
2009	94.0%	2.6%	1.1%	1.3%	0.9%	0.1%	0.0%	0.1%
2010	94.0%	2.8%	0.9%	1.2%	0.9%	0.1%	0.0%	0.1%
2011	93.7%	3.0%	0.8%	1.3%	0.9%	0.1%	0.0%	0.1%
2012	93.7%	3.2%	0.8%	1.2%	0.7%	0.1%	0.1%	0.3%
2013	93.5%	3.5%	0.8%	1.0%	0.8%	0.1%	0.1%	0.3%
2014	93.5%	3.6%	0.7%	0.9%	0.7%	0.0%	0.3%	0.2%
2015	93.1%	3.8%	0.7%	1.0%	1.0%	0.0%	0.2%	0.1%
2016	93.1%	4.1%	0.6%	0.9%	0.9%	0.0%	0.3%	0.1%
2017	93.0%	4.3%	0.7%	0.8%	0.9%	0.0%	0.1%	0.1%
2018	92.2%	5.2%	1.0%	0.7%	0.7%	0.0%	0.1%	0.1%
2019	91.7%	5.7%	0.9%	0.7%	0.8%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%
2020	90.1%	7.7%	0.8%	0.7%	0.5%	0.0%	0.1%	0.1%
2021	88.0%	9.6%	1.3%	0.5%	0.4%	0.1%	0.0%	0.1%
2022	87.2%	10.6%	1.2%	0.4%	0.4%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2023	85.9%	11.6%	1.5%	0.4%	0.3%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2024	84.4%	13.4%	1.4%	0.4%	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. Overall its share fell from 94.0% in 2009 to 84.4% in 2024, down 9.6 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 8 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Boone County: its share of workers rose from 2.6% in 2009 to 13.4% in 2024, up 10.8 percentage points. Most of that increase, 7.7 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Public transit lost the most ground, falling from 1.3% to 0.4% of workers (down 0.9 percentage points).

Commute Start Times in Boone County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Boone County?

The bars show when commuters in Boone 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 Boone County6.0% Kentucky5.9%	6.0%
5:00-5:29 AM	5:00-5:29 AM Boone County4.1% Kentucky4.3%	4.1%
5:30-5:59 AM	5:30-5:59 AM Boone County5.6% Kentucky5.3%	5.6%
6:00-6:29 AM	6:00-6:29 AM Boone County7.5% Kentucky8.3%	7.5%
6:30-6:59 AM	6:30-6:59 AM Boone County11.2% Kentucky10.3%	11.2%
7:00-7:29 AM	7:00-7:29 AM Boone County15.1% Kentucky14.8%	15.1%
7:30-7:59 AM	7:30-7:59 AM Boone County10.2% Kentucky12.4%	10.2%
8:00-8:29 AM	8:00-8:29 AM Boone County10.1% Kentucky9.6%	10.1%
8:30-8:59 AM	8:30-8:59 AM Boone County5.5% Kentucky4.5%	5.5%
9:00-9:59 AM	9:00-9:59 AM Boone County4.9% Kentucky5.2%	4.9%
10:00-10:59 AM	10:00-10:59 AM Boone County2.5% Kentucky2.5%	2.5%
11:00-11:59 AM	11:00-11:59 AM Boone County1.2% Kentucky1.3%	1.2%
12:00-3:59 PM	12:00-3:59 PM Boone County7.2% Kentucky7.3%	7.2%
4:00-11:59 PM	4:00-11:59 PM Boone County8.9% Kentucky8.4%	8.9%

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

The busiest time to head out in Boone County is 7:00-7:29 AM, when 15.1% of commuters leave home, compared with 14.8% across Kentucky. Early starts are about as common as in Kentucky: 15.7% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 15.5% there. The morning rush looks much like Kentucky's: 46.6% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 47.1% there. About 1 in 4 commuters (24.8%) 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 Boone 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 Boone 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 Boone 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.

• Boone County
• Kentucky
• United States

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Boone County	Kentucky	United States
2009	7:41 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:40 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:39 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:38 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:40 AM	7:35 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:37 AM	7:35 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:39 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:40 AM	7:34 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:41 AM	7:34 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:39 AM	7:34 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:39 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:34 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:34 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:32 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:31 AM	7:32 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:32 AM	7:33 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Boone County were on the road by 7:32 AM, 9 minutes earlier than in 2009 (7:41 AM). The shift is sharper than across Kentucky, where the typical start moved 2 minutes earlier. Commuters in Boone 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 Boone County has moved 8 minutes earlier.

How does Boone County's commute time compare?

Metric	Boone County	Kentucky	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	21.8 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	06:30 AM – 06:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	13.4%	10.2%	15.0%
Walked	0.3%	2.0%	2.4%
Public Transit	0.4%	0.6%	3.2%

The average commute time in Boone County is 21.8 minutes, longer than the 20.8 minutes in Kentucky.

0.4% commute by public transit, lower than the 0.6% in Kentucky. 0.3% commute by walking, lower than the 2.0% in Kentucky.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau