Metairie Commute Time Map & Patterns

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

You 9/24/26, 4:00 PM

How much time do drivers in Metairie spend on the road daily?

Map AI 9/24/26, 4:00 PM

Commute Time Burden in Metairie: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Metairie spend about 38 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 158 hours, about 6.6 full days, spent commuting. That is 11% less time on the road than the Louisiana average of 21.3 minutes each way, a difference of 2.3 minutes.

Metairie holds about 2.9% of Louisiana's population but accounts for roughly 2.6% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Metairie would save about 63 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,955 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)
Metairie	18.9 min	37.8 min	158 hrs/yr	$4,887	4,634
Louisiana	21.3 min	42.5 min	177 hrs/yr	$5,493	1,164
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.

Metairie Commute Map

On average, it takes 18.9 minutes to get to work in Metairie. That's 16% 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 10.4% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Metairie

Riding a motorcycle is unusually rare in Metairie: 416.2 times less than the Louisiana average (0.0% vs 0.1%).

Commute Mode Trends in Metairie, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Metairie 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	Bicycle	Motorcycle
2009	92.8%	2.9%	1.7%	1.2%	0.8%	0.2%	0.3%	0.1%
2010	92.3%	3.0%	1.9%	1.3%	0.8%	0.2%	0.4%	0.1%
2011	92.0%	3.1%	1.9%	1.4%	0.9%	0.1%	0.5%	0.1%
2012	91.4%	2.9%	1.8%	1.4%	1.5%	0.3%	0.6%	0.1%
2013	91.4%	2.7%	1.9%	1.3%	1.8%	0.3%	0.6%	0.0%
2014	92.3%	2.6%	1.6%	1.1%	1.7%	0.3%	0.5%	0.0%
2015	91.7%	3.1%	1.7%	1.0%	1.7%	0.2%	0.5%	0.1%
2016	91.7%	3.5%	1.9%	0.8%	1.4%	0.3%	0.3%	0.1%
2017	91.7%	3.6%	2.1%	0.7%	1.3%	0.2%	0.3%	0.1%
2018	92.4%	3.7%	2.2%	0.5%	0.7%	0.2%	0.3%	0.1%
2019	91.4%	4.5%	2.4%	0.5%	0.7%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%
2020	91.5%	5.1%	1.7%	0.3%	0.7%	0.4%	0.3%	0.0%
2021	89.4%	7.1%	1.9%	0.4%	0.6%	0.4%	0.2%	0.0%
2022	88.0%	8.4%	1.9%	0.5%	0.5%	0.5%	0.1%	0.0%
2023	85.6%	10.1%	2.4%	0.7%	0.6%	0.4%	0.1%	0.0%
2024	85.9%	10.4%	1.7%	0.8%	0.6%	0.5%	0.1%	0.0%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share bottomed out in 2023 at 85.6%. Overall it fell from 92.8% in 2009 to 85.9% in 2024, down 6.9 percentage points.

Working from home gained the most ground in Metairie: its share of workers rose from 2.9% in 2009 to 10.4% in 2024, up 7.5 percentage points. Most of that increase, 5.9 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Commute Start Times in Metairie

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Metairie?

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

12:00-4:59 AM		3.4%
5:00-5:29 AM		3.0%
5:30-5:59 AM		3.5%
6:00-6:29 AM		8.3%
6:30-6:59 AM		12.1%
7:00-7:29 AM		15.2%
7:30-7:59 AM		14.6%
8:00-8:29 AM		14.3%
8:30-8:59 AM		6.7%
9:00-9:59 AM		6.2%
10:00-10:59 AM		3.4%
11:00-11:59 AM		1.1%
12:00-3:59 PM		4.6%
4:00-11:59 PM		3.7%

Metairie Louisiana Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Metairie is 7:00-7:29 AM, when 15.2% of commuters leave home, compared with 16.1% across Louisiana. Early starts are less common than in Louisiana: 10.0% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 18.5% there. The morning rush is more concentrated than in Louisiana: 56.1% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 48.5% there. About 1 in 5 commuters (19.0%) 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 Metairie, 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 Metairie 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 Metairie next to Louisiana 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	Metairie	Louisiana	United States
2009	7:47 AM	7:23 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:47 AM	7:23 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:47 AM	7:23 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:49 AM	7:23 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:48 AM	7:23 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:47 AM	7:23 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:47 AM	7:23 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:46 AM	7:23 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:43 AM	7:22 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:43 AM	7:22 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:41 AM	7:21 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:39 AM	7:20 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:39 AM	7:20 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:41 AM	7:20 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:43 AM	7:20 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:39 AM	7:20 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Metairie were on the road by 7:39 AM, 7 minutes earlier than in 2009 (7:47 AM). The shift is sharper than across Louisiana, where the typical start moved 3 minutes earlier. Commuters in Metairie now leave 1 minute 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 Metairie has moved 2 minutes earlier.

How does Metairie's commute time compare?

Metric	Metairie	Louisiana	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	18.9 min	21.3 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	10.4%	8.1%	15.0%
Walked	1.7%	1.8%	2.4%
Public Transit	0.8%	0.9%	3.2%

The average commute time in Metairie is 18.9 minutes, shorter than the 21.3 minutes in Louisiana.

0.8% commute by public transit, lower than the 0.9% in Louisiana. 1.7% commute by walking, lower than the 1.8% in Louisiana.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Metairie, Louisiana.

Is commuting expensive in Metairie, Louisiana?

Commuters here spend an estimated 158 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $4,887 at a typical national wage. That's 11% less than the typical Louisiana commuter spends.

What time should you leave for work to avoid traffic in Metairie, Louisiana?

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