Clark County Commute Time Map & Patterns

Commute Time Burden in Clark County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Clark 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.

Clark County holds about 0.8% of Kentucky's population but accounts for roughly 0.9% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Clark County would save about 73 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,253 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)
Clark County	21.8 min	43.6 min	182 hrs/yr	$5,632	545
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 Clark 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 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 12.3% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Clark County

• Car: 86.0%
• Worked at Home: 12.3%
• Other: 0.7%
• Taxi: 0.4%
• Walked: 0.4% unusually low
• Bicycle: 0.2%
• Public Transportation: < 0.1% unusually low
• Motorcycle: < 0.1% unusually low

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

Walking is unusually rare in Clark County: 5.5 times less than the Kentucky average (0.4% vs 2.0%).

Public transit is unusually rare in Clark County: 8.9 times less than the Kentucky average (0.1% vs 0.6%).

Few people walk or bike to work in Clark County: just 0.6%, 3.9 times below the Kentucky average of 2.2%.

Commute Mode Trends in Clark County, 2009-2024

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

Show commute mode data by year

Year	Car	Worked at Home	Other	Taxi	Walked	Bicycle	Public Transportation	Motorcycle
2009	95.4%	2.4%	0.4%	0.0%	1.3%	0.1%	0.2%	0.3%
2010	95.2%	2.6%	0.3%	0.0%	1.2%	0.1%	0.4%	0.3%
2011	94.3%	2.6%	0.5%	0.0%	1.7%	0.1%	0.6%	0.2%
2012	93.4%	3.3%	0.5%	0.0%	2.0%	0.0%	0.8%	0.1%
2013	93.6%	3.3%	0.5%	0.0%	1.9%	0.0%	0.6%	0.1%
2014	92.8%	3.5%	0.7%	0.0%	2.4%	0.0%	0.4%	0.1%
2015	92.7%	3.7%	1.0%	0.0%	2.1%	0.0%	0.5%	0.0%
2016	92.4%	3.9%	1.3%	0.3%	1.7%	0.0%	0.2%	0.0%
2017	92.3%	3.5%	1.8%	0.4%	1.8%	0.0%	0.1%	0.0%
2018	92.4%	3.5%	1.9%	0.3%	1.8%	0.0%	0.2%	0.0%
2019	92.9%	3.1%	1.9%	0.3%	1.6%	0.0%	0.2%	0.0%
2020	92.1%	4.5%	1.5%	0.3%	1.5%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2021	90.6%	6.2%	1.5%	0.0%	1.6%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2022	89.4%	7.7%	1.2%	0.4%	1.2%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2023	87.8%	10.3%	0.3%	0.5%	0.9%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2024	86.0%	12.3%	0.7%	0.4%	0.4%	0.2%	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 95.4% in 2009 to 86.0% in 2024, down 9.4 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 5 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Clark County: its share of workers rose from 2.4% in 2009 to 12.3% in 2024, up 9.9 percentage points. Most of that increase, 9.2 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

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

Commute Start Times in Clark County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Clark County?

The bars show when commuters in Clark 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 Clark County4.0% Kentucky5.9%	4.0%
5:00-5:29 AM	5:00-5:29 AM Clark County5.2% Kentucky4.3%	5.2%
5:30-5:59 AM	5:30-5:59 AM Clark County7.2% Kentucky5.3%	7.2%
6:00-6:29 AM	6:00-6:29 AM Clark County6.9% Kentucky8.3%	6.9%
6:30-6:59 AM	6:30-6:59 AM Clark County12.7% Kentucky10.3%	12.7%
7:00-7:29 AM	7:00-7:29 AM Clark County14.9% Kentucky14.8%	14.9%
7:30-7:59 AM	7:30-7:59 AM Clark County14.0% Kentucky12.4%	14.0%
8:00-8:29 AM	8:00-8:29 AM Clark County8.0% Kentucky9.6%	8.0%
8:30-8:59 AM	8:30-8:59 AM Clark County5.6% Kentucky4.5%	5.6%
9:00-9:59 AM	9:00-9:59 AM Clark County2.6% Kentucky5.2%	2.6%
10:00-10:59 AM	10:00-10:59 AM Clark County1.5% Kentucky2.5%	1.5%
11:00-11:59 AM	11:00-11:59 AM Clark County1.9% Kentucky1.3%	1.9%
12:00-3:59 PM	12:00-3:59 PM Clark County6.0% Kentucky7.3%	6.0%
4:00-11:59 PM	4:00-11:59 PM Clark County9.5% Kentucky8.4%	9.5%

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

The busiest time to head out in Clark County is 7:00-7:29 AM, when 14.9% of commuters leave home, compared with 14.8% across Kentucky. Early starts are about as common as in Kentucky: 16.4% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 15.5% there. The morning rush is more concentrated than in Kentucky: 49.6% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 47.1% there. About 1 in 5 commuters (21.5%) 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 Clark 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 Clark 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 Clark 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.

• Clark County
• Kentucky
• United States

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Clark County	Kentucky	United States
2009	7:27 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:35 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:39 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:41 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:37 AM	7:35 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:35 AM	7:35 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:29 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:23 AM	7:34 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:22 AM	7:34 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:20 AM	7:34 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:22 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:20 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:23 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:24 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:26 AM	7:32 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:28 AM	7:33 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Clark County were on the road by 7:28 AM, 1 minute later than in 2009 (7:27 AM). That goes against the trend across Kentucky, where the typical commuter now leaves 2 minutes earlier than in 2009. Commuters in Clark County now leave 10 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 Clark County has moved 6 minutes later.

How does Clark County's commute time compare?

Metric	Clark 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	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	12.3%	10.2%	15.0%
Walked	0.4%	2.0%	2.4%
Public Transit	< 0.1%	0.6%	3.2%

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

0.1% commute by public transit, lower than the 0.6% in Kentucky. 0.4% commute by walking, lower than the 2.0% in Kentucky.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau