Carter County Commute Time Map & Patterns

Commute Time Burden in Carter County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Carter County spend about 47 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 198 hours, about 8.2 full days, spent commuting. That is 14% more time on the road than the Kentucky average of 20.8 minutes each way, a difference of 3.0 minutes.

Carter County holds about 0.6% of Kentucky's population but accounts for roughly 0.7% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Carter County would save about 79 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,454 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)
Carter County	23.7 min	47.5 min	198 hrs/yr	$6,134	616
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

N

On average, it takes 23.7 minutes to get to work in Carter County. That's 6% longer than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM, followed by 08:00 AM – 08:29 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 3.6% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Carter County

• Car: 91.9%
• Worked at Home: 3.6%
• Walked: 3.3%
• Bicycle: 0.7% unusually high
• Other: 0.5%
• Motorcycle: < 0.1% unusually low
• Public Transportation: < 0.1% unusually low
• Taxi: < 0.1% unusually low

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

Public transit is essentially absent in Carter County, versus 0.6% in Kentucky.

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

Biking is unusually common in Carter County: 3.5 times more than the Kentucky average (0.7% vs 0.2%).

Commute Mode Trends in Carter County, 2009-2024

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

Show commute mode data by year

Year	Car	Worked at Home	Walked	Bicycle	Other	Public Transportation	Taxi	Motorcycle
2009	94.1%	2.7%	2.1%	0.1%	0.7%	0.2%	0.0%	0.0%
2010	93.5%	3.0%	2.1%	0.1%	0.8%	0.5%	0.0%	0.0%
2011	94.3%	1.7%	2.7%	0.0%	0.9%	0.4%	0.0%	0.0%
2012	94.8%	1.3%	2.8%	0.0%	0.7%	0.4%	0.0%	0.0%
2013	92.0%	2.2%	4.5%	0.0%	0.9%	0.5%	0.0%	0.0%
2014	92.6%	2.0%	3.9%	0.2%	0.8%	0.6%	0.0%	0.0%
2015	92.1%	2.3%	4.9%	0.1%	0.5%	0.2%	0.0%	0.0%
2016	92.4%	2.2%	4.6%	0.1%	0.5%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2017	92.2%	2.6%	4.2%	0.1%	0.6%	0.2%	0.0%	0.0%
2018	92.5%	3.0%	3.2%	0.2%	1.0%	0.2%	0.0%	0.0%
2019	93.2%	2.5%	3.1%	0.0%	0.9%	0.2%	0.1%	0.0%
2020	93.8%	2.8%	2.6%	0.0%	0.7%	0.0%	0.1%	0.0%
2021	93.0%	3.0%	3.2%	0.0%	0.8%	0.0%	0.1%	0.0%
2022	91.9%	3.1%	4.3%	0.0%	0.6%	0.0%	0.1%	0.0%
2023	93.2%	2.3%	3.8%	0.0%	0.6%	0.0%	0.1%	0.0%
2024	91.9%	3.6%	3.3%	0.7%	0.5%	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 peaked in 2012 at 94.8%. Overall it fell from 94.1% in 2009 to 91.9% in 2024, down 2.2 percentage points. It has fallen in the latest release.

Walking gained the most ground in Carter County: its share of workers rose from 2.1% in 2009 to 3.3% in 2024, up 1.2 percentage points.

Biking overtook public transit to become the 4th most common choice in the 2024 release and has stayed ahead since.

Walking peaked at 4.9% in 2015 and has since fallen back to 3.3%.

Commute Start Times in Carter County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Carter County?

The bars show when commuters in Carter 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 Carter County5.7% Kentucky5.9%	5.7%
5:00-5:29 AM	5:00-5:29 AM Carter County8.1% Kentucky4.3%	8.1%
5:30-5:59 AM	5:30-5:59 AM Carter County6.5% Kentucky5.3%	6.5%
6:00-6:29 AM	6:00-6:29 AM Carter County10.8% Kentucky8.3%	10.8%
6:30-6:59 AM	6:30-6:59 AM Carter County10.0% Kentucky10.3%	10.0%
7:00-7:29 AM	7:00-7:29 AM Carter County16.0% Kentucky14.8%	16.0%
7:30-7:59 AM	7:30-7:59 AM Carter County8.6% Kentucky12.4%	8.6%
8:00-8:29 AM	8:00-8:29 AM Carter County11.6% Kentucky9.6%	11.6%
8:30-8:59 AM	8:30-8:59 AM Carter County2.5% Kentucky4.5%	2.5%
9:00-9:59 AM	9:00-9:59 AM Carter County2.9% Kentucky5.2%	2.9%
10:00-10:59 AM	10:00-10:59 AM Carter County0.9% Kentucky2.5%	0.9%
11:00-11:59 AM	11:00-11:59 AM Carter County2.2% Kentucky1.3%	2.2%
12:00-3:59 PM	12:00-3:59 PM Carter County5.6% Kentucky7.3%	5.6%
4:00-11:59 PM	4:00-11:59 PM Carter County8.6% Kentucky8.4%	8.6%

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

The busiest time to head out in Carter County is 7:00-7:29 AM, when 16.0% of commuters leave home, compared with 14.8% across Kentucky. Early starts are more common than in Kentucky: 20.3% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 15.5% there. The morning rush looks much like Kentucky's: 46.2% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 47.1% there. About 1 in 5 commuters (20.2%) 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 Carter 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 Carter 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 Carter 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.

• Carter County
• Kentucky
• United States

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Carter County	Kentucky	United States
2009	7:34 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:30 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:31 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:26 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:28 AM	7:35 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:22 AM	7:35 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:28 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:27 AM	7:34 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:28 AM	7:34 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:27 AM	7:34 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:33 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:31 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:32 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:29 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:24 AM	7:32 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:17 AM	7:33 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Carter County were on the road by 7:17 AM, 17 minutes earlier than in 2009 (7:34 AM). The shift is sharper than across Kentucky, where the typical start moved 2 minutes earlier. Commuters in Carter County now leave 21 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 Carter County has moved 16 minutes earlier. The 2024 release is the earliest typical start for Carter County in the whole series.

How does Carter County's commute time compare?

Metric	Carter County	Kentucky	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	23.7 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	08:00 AM – 08:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	3.6%	10.2%	15.0%
Walked	3.3%	2.0%	2.4%
Public Transit	< 0.1%	0.6%	3.2%

The average commute time in Carter County is 23.7 minutes, longer than the 20.8 minutes in Kentucky.

0.0% commute by public transit, lower than the 0.6% in Kentucky. 3.3% commute by walking, higher than the 2.0% in Kentucky.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau