Franklin County Commute Time Map & Patterns

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Commuting in Franklin County, Kentucky: how long it takes, when people leave home and how they get to work. Ask Map AI about any address.

You 9/24/26, 6:06 PM

How long is the round-trip commute in Franklin County?

Map AI 9/24/26, 6:06 PM

Commute Time Burden in Franklin County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Franklin County spend about 33 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 137 hours, about 5.7 full days, spent commuting. That is 21% less time on the road than the Kentucky average of 20.8 minutes each way, a difference of 4.4 minutes.

Franklin County holds about 1.1% of Kentucky's population but accounts for roughly 0.9% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Franklin County would save about 55 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,698 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)
Franklin County	16.4 min	32.9 min	137 hrs/yr	$4,244	822
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

Fastest commutes among counties in Kentucky

Calloway County (13.9 min)
Owsley County (15.0 min)
Taylor County (15.3 min)

Slowest commutes among counties in Kentucky

Owen County (37.7 min)
Spencer County (33.3 min)
Bracken County (33.2 min)

Compare commute times among different counties

Franklin County

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Average commute time

On average, it takes 16.4 minutes to get to work in Franklin County. That's 27% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

Faster than 93% of counties in Kentucky

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 14.2% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Franklin County

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

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

Biking is unusually rare in Franklin County: 3.8 times less than the Kentucky average (0.0% vs 0.2%).

Commute Mode Trends in Franklin County, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Franklin 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.

Share of workers aged 16 and over, by ACS 5-year release year. Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Show commute mode data by year

Year	Car	Worked at Home	Walked	Public Transportation	Other	Taxi	Motorcycle	Bicycle
2009	92.2%	2.7%	2.2%	0.9%	1.3%	0.0%	0.5%	0.1%
2010	92.3%	2.9%	1.8%	1.0%	1.3%	0.1%	0.4%	0.1%
2011	91.7%	3.1%	2.6%	1.6%	0.6%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%
2012	92.3%	2.4%	2.6%	1.7%	0.5%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%
2013	92.8%	2.8%	2.3%	1.4%	0.3%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%
2014	93.4%	2.6%	2.1%	1.2%	0.3%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%
2015	93.6%	2.5%	1.9%	1.4%	0.3%	0.1%	0.0%	0.2%
2016	94.9%	2.0%	2.2%	0.4%	0.4%	0.0%	0.0%	0.2%
2017	94.9%	2.6%	1.9%	0.3%	0.2%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%
2018	94.7%	2.7%	1.6%	0.3%	0.2%	0.0%	0.4%	0.1%
2019	93.5%	3.1%	2.0%	0.5%	0.2%	0.0%	0.4%	0.1%
2020	89.7%	7.4%	1.9%	0.4%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%	0.1%
2021	87.0%	10.0%	1.9%	0.7%	0.2%	0.0%	0.1%	0.0%
2022	84.9%	11.3%	1.9%	1.2%	0.6%	0.0%	0.2%	0.0%
2023	83.1%	13.2%	1.9%	1.1%	0.5%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2024	83.0%	14.2%	1.5%	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 2016 at 94.9%. Overall it fell from 92.2% in 2009 to 83.0% in 2024, down 9.2 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 7 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Franklin County: its share of workers rose from 2.7% in 2009 to 14.2% in 2024, up 11.5 percentage points. Most of that increase, 11.1 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Walking lost the most ground, falling from 2.2% to 1.5% of workers (down 0.7 percentage points).

Commute Start Times in Franklin County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Franklin County?

The bars show when commuters in Franklin 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		4.0%
5:00-5:29 AM		2.5%
5:30-5:59 AM		4.1%
6:00-6:29 AM		7.3%
6:30-6:59 AM		12.7%
7:00-7:29 AM		12.8%
7:30-7:59 AM		19.1%
8:00-8:29 AM		11.5%
8:30-8:59 AM		3.4%
9:00-9:59 AM		3.8%
10:00-10:59 AM		3.3%
11:00-11:59 AM		0.7%
12:00-3:59 PM		7.7%
4:00-11:59 PM		7.2%

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

The busiest time to head out in Franklin County is 7:30-7:59 AM, when 19.1% of commuters leave home, compared with 12.4% across Kentucky. Early starts are less common than in Kentucky: 10.6% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 15.5% there. The morning rush is more concentrated than in Kentucky: 56.0% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 47.1% there. About 1 in 4 commuters (22.7%) 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 Franklin 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 Franklin 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 Franklin 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.

Median time commuters leave home, by ACS 5-year release year. Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Franklin County	Kentucky	United States
2009	7:36 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:39 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:39 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:40 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:40 AM	7:35 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:38 AM	7:35 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:38 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:39 AM	7:34 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:40 AM	7:34 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:43 AM	7:34 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:43 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:43 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:43 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:43 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:40 AM	7:32 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:41 AM	7:33 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Franklin County were on the road by 7:41 AM, 5 minutes later than in 2009 (7:36 AM). That goes against the trend across Kentucky, where the typical commuter now leaves 2 minutes earlier than in 2009. Commuters in Franklin County now leave 3 minutes later than the typical American commuter (7:38 AM). Since the 2019 release, which covers the years just before the pandemic, the typical start in Franklin County has moved 3 minutes earlier.

How does Franklin County's commute time compare?

Metric	Franklin County	Kentucky	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	16.4 min	20.8 min	22.4 min
Departure Window	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM
Secondary Departure Window	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	14.2%	10.2%	15.0%
Walked	1.5%	2.0%	2.4%
Public Transit	0.7%	0.6%	3.2%

The average commute time in Franklin County is 16.4 minutes, shorter than the 20.8 minutes in Kentucky.

0.7% commute by public transit, higher than the 0.6% in Kentucky. 1.5% commute by walking, lower than the 2.0% in Kentucky.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Franklin County, KY Commute Compared With Nearby Counties

Franklin County, KY is the 2nd largest of the 6 counties compared here, 51,842 residents against a local median of 27,278. The measure that sets Franklin County, KY apart most is one-way commute: 16.4 min, 36% below the local median of 25.5 min. That is the better end of the local range on this measure.

Work from home tells the same story from another angle: 14.2% against a local median of 11.3%, 26% above it. The counties themselves spread 17.3 min on one-way commute, so Franklin County, KY sits at one end of an already wide local range rather than apart from it. Franklin County, KY has the lowest one-way commute of the 6 areas compared here.

Area	Population	One-way commute	Work from home	Typical departure
Franklin County, KY	51,842	16.4 min #1/6	14.2% #2/6	7:41 AM #6/6
Woodford County, KY	27,278	22.8 min	14.9%	7:30 AM
Anderson County, KY	24,353	29.0 min	9.5%	7:25 AM
Owen County, KY	11,330	37.7 min	11.3%	7:07 AM
Scott County, KY	59,536	20.3 min	10.5%	7:25 AM
Shelby County, KY	49,096	25.5 min	12.6%	7:32 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Franklin County, Kentucky.

How much does the average commute cost workers in Franklin County, Kentucky?

Commuters here spend an estimated 137 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $4,244 at a typical national wage. That's 21% less than the typical Kentucky commuter spends.

When is rush hour worst in Franklin County, Kentucky?

Traffic peaks between 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM in Franklin County, Kentucky. Leaving before or after this window is the single easiest way to avoid the heaviest local congestion, though 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM also sees a secondary bump.

How much money can remote workers save in Franklin County, Kentucky?

About 14.2% of workers here already work from home. Working from home just 2 days a week in Franklin County would save about 55 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,698 at the same national wage assumption used above.

Which counties in Kentucky have the fastest and slowest commutes?

Among counties in Kentucky, the shortest average commutes are in Calloway County (13.9 min), Owsley County (15.0 min), Taylor County (15.3 min). The longest are in Owen County (37.7 min), Spencer County (33.3 min), Bracken County (33.2 min).