Malden Commute Time Map & Patterns

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

You 9/24/26, 4:04 PM

What does a typical morning commute look like in Malden?

Map AI 9/24/26, 4:04 PM

Commute Time Burden in Malden: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Malden spend about 65 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 270 hours, about 11.2 full days, spent commuting. That is 27% more time on the road than the Massachusetts average of 25.6 minutes each way, a difference of 6.8 minutes.

Malden holds about 0.9% of Massachusetts's population but accounts for roughly 1.2% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Malden would save about 108 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $3,344 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)
Malden	32.4 min	64.7 min	270 hrs/yr	$8,360	3,776
Massachusetts	25.6 min	51.1 min	213 hrs/yr	$6,603	2,164
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.

Malden Commute Map

On average, it takes 32.4 minutes to get to work in Malden. That's 44% longer than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 08:00 AM – 08:29 AM, followed by 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 19.8% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Malden

Riding a motorcycle is essentially absent in Malden, versus 0.1% in Massachusetts.

Commute Mode Trends in Malden, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Malden 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	Public Transportation	Walked	Other	Bicycle	Taxi	Motorcycle
2009	69.6%	1.7%	24.2%	3.5%	0.5%	0.3%	0.1%	0.1%
2010	68.1%	2.6%	25.2%	3.0%	0.6%	0.2%	0.2%	0.1%
2011	66.2%	2.6%	26.1%	3.3%	1.0%	0.5%	0.3%	0.0%
2012	65.3%	2.2%	28.1%	2.5%	0.8%	0.8%	0.3%	0.0%
2013	63.0%	2.1%	30.3%	2.8%	0.8%	0.9%	0.3%	0.0%
2014	62.3%	2.3%	30.4%	3.4%	0.7%	0.6%	0.3%	0.0%
2015	62.0%	1.4%	31.2%	3.4%	1.2%	0.6%	0.2%	0.0%
2016	62.5%	2.0%	31.1%	3.2%	1.1%	0.2%	0.0%	0.0%
2017	60.5%	2.8%	31.8%	3.5%	1.1%	0.3%	0.0%	0.0%
2018	60.9%	3.0%	31.1%	3.3%	1.4%	0.3%	0.0%	0.0%
2019	63.8%	2.9%	29.3%	2.4%	1.1%	0.4%	0.1%	0.0%
2020	61.1%	7.6%	27.9%	2.0%	0.8%	0.4%	0.2%	0.0%
2021	59.3%	11.8%	24.9%	2.3%	1.1%	0.4%	0.2%	0.0%
2022	59.0%	15.1%	21.3%	2.7%	1.2%	0.2%	0.5%	0.0%
2023	58.2%	17.6%	19.3%	2.2%	1.8%	0.6%	0.4%	0.0%
2024	55.9%	19.8%	18.8%	2.7%	1.9%	0.6%	0.4%	0.0%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Overall its share fell from 69.6% in 2009 to 55.9% in 2024, down 13.7 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 5 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Malden: its share of workers rose from 1.7% in 2009 to 19.8% in 2024, up 18.1 percentage points. Most of that increase, 16.9 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Public transit lost the most ground, falling from 24.2% to 18.8% of workers (down 5.4 percentage points).

Working from home overtook public transit to become the 2nd most common choice in the 2024 release and has stayed ahead since.

Commute Start Times in Malden

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Malden?

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

12:00-4:59 AM		2.8%
5:00-5:29 AM		2.4%
5:30-5:59 AM		3.0%
6:00-6:29 AM		7.3%
6:30-6:59 AM		8.2%
7:00-7:29 AM		14.1%
7:30-7:59 AM		10.4%
8:00-8:29 AM		17.4%
8:30-8:59 AM		6.9%
9:00-9:59 AM		9.3%
10:00-10:59 AM		4.2%
11:00-11:59 AM		2.2%
12:00-3:59 PM		6.8%
4:00-11:59 PM		5.1%

Malden Massachusetts Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Malden is 8:00-8:29 AM, when 17.4% of commuters leave home, compared with 13.5% across Massachusetts. Early starts are less common than in Massachusetts: 8.1% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 11.1% there. The morning rush looks much like Massachusetts's: 50.1% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 49.0% there. About 1 in 4 commuters (27.6%) 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 Malden, 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 Malden 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 Malden next to Massachusetts 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	Malden	Massachusetts	United States
2009	7:41 AM	7:47 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:45 AM	7:48 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:50 AM	7:48 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:52 AM	7:49 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:52 AM	7:49 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:52 AM	7:48 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:44 AM	7:48 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:41 AM	7:47 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:40 AM	7:47 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:45 AM	7:46 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:39 AM	7:45 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:53 AM	7:46 AM	7:37 AM
2021	8:00 AM	7:45 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:59 AM	7:46 AM	7:37 AM
2023	8:01 AM	7:47 AM	7:38 AM
2024	8:03 AM	7:47 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Malden were on the road by 8:03 AM, 23 minutes later than in 2009 (7:41 AM). Across Massachusetts, the typical start barely moved over the same years. Commuters in Malden now leave 25 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 Malden has moved 24 minutes later. The 2024 release is the latest typical start for Malden in the whole series.

How does Malden's commute time compare?

Metric	Malden	Massachusetts	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	32.4 min	25.6 min	22.4 min
Departure Window	08:00 AM – 08:29 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM
Secondary Departure Window	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	08:00 AM – 08:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	19.8%	18.6%	15.0%
Walked	2.7%	4.1%	2.4%
Public Transit	18.8%	6.5%	3.2%

The average commute time in Malden is 32.4 minutes, longer than the 25.6 minutes in Massachusetts.

18.8% commute by public transit, higher than the 6.5% in Massachusetts. 2.7% commute by walking, lower than the 4.1% in Massachusetts.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Malden, MA Commute Compared With Nearby Cities

Malden, MA is the largest of the 6 cities compared here, 66,048 residents against a local median of 39,880. Malden, MA's work from home, at 19.8%, runs 38% above the 14.3% typical of the cities around it.

The cities themselves spread 19.1% on work from home, so Malden, MA sits at one end of an already wide local range rather than apart from it. Malden, MA has the 3rd highest work from home of the 6 areas compared here.

Area	Population	One-way commute	Work from home	Typical departure
Malden, MA	66,048	32.4 min #4/6	19.8% #3/6	8:03 AM #6/6
Everett, MA	49,993	32.8 min	10.5%	7:26 AM
Melrose, MA	29,648	32.9 min	29.6%	7:44 AM
Chelsea, MA	39,880	30.9 min	10.4%	7:12 AM
Medford, MA	59,237	30.1 min	26.8%	8:02 AM
Saugus, MA	28,773	28.7 min	14.3%	7:45 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Malden, Massachusetts.

Is commuting expensive in Malden, Massachusetts?

Commuters here spend an estimated 270 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $8,360 at a typical national wage. That's 27% more than the typical Massachusetts commuter spends.

What time should you leave for work to avoid traffic in Malden, Massachusetts?

Traffic peaks between 08:00 AM – 08:29 AM in Malden, Massachusetts. 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.