Wellesley Commute Time Map & Patterns

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Commuting in Wellesley, 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

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

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

Commute Time Burden in Wellesley: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Wellesley spend about 52 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 215 hours, about 9.0 full days, spent commuting. That is 1% more time on the road than the Massachusetts average of 25.6 minutes each way, a difference of 0.2 minutes.

Wellesley holds about 0.4% of Massachusetts's population and accounts for roughly 0.4% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Wellesley would save about 86 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,666 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)
Wellesley	25.8 min	51.6 min	215 hrs/yr	$6,665	1,635
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.

Wellesley Commute Map

On average, it takes 25.8 minutes to get to work in Wellesley. That's 15% 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 32.0% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Wellesley

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

Driving is 24% less common in Wellesley than the Massachusetts average (51.6% vs 68.2%).

Taking a taxi is unusually rare in Wellesley: 165338991.0 times less than the Massachusetts average (0.0% vs 0.4%).

Biking is unusually rare in Wellesley: 3.9 times less than the Massachusetts average (0.2% vs 0.8%).

Commute Mode Trends in Wellesley, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Wellesley 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	Bicycle	Taxi	Motorcycle
2009	61.3%	8.1%	17.7%	10.1%	1.9%	0.6%	0.2%	0.0%
2010	63.5%	8.5%	16.2%	9.8%	1.3%	0.5%	0.2%	0.0%
2011	63.5%	8.4%	17.4%	9.0%	0.9%	0.5%	0.3%	0.0%
2012	64.8%	8.2%	15.3%	9.9%	1.0%	0.5%	0.2%	0.0%
2013	65.6%	9.1%	14.4%	9.7%	0.5%	0.5%	0.1%	0.0%
2014	66.4%	9.6%	13.0%	9.4%	0.7%	0.5%	0.2%	0.0%
2015	65.6%	8.9%	13.1%	10.9%	0.8%	0.7%	0.1%	0.0%
2016	65.8%	9.9%	11.7%	11.2%	0.7%	0.6%	0.1%	0.0%
2017	65.1%	11.0%	11.9%	10.8%	0.4%	0.4%	0.2%	0.1%
2018	65.1%	11.5%	11.4%	10.6%	0.7%	0.4%	0.2%	0.1%
2019	64.0%	12.2%	11.7%	11.1%	0.4%	0.4%	0.0%	0.1%
2020	60.9%	16.5%	13.2%	8.6%	0.4%	0.3%	0.0%	0.1%
2021	55.7%	23.0%	12.9%	7.7%	0.5%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2022	53.4%	28.2%	11.0%	6.4%	0.8%	0.1%	0.0%	0.1%
2023	53.0%	30.8%	10.6%	4.9%	0.6%	0.2%	0.0%	0.1%
2024	51.6%	32.0%	10.1%	5.1%	1.0%	0.2%	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 2014 at 66.4%. Overall it fell from 61.3% in 2009 to 51.6% in 2024, down 9.7 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 6 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Wellesley: its share of workers rose from 8.1% in 2009 to 32.0% in 2024, up 23.9 percentage points. Most of that increase, 19.8 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Walking lost the most ground, falling from 17.7% to 10.1% of workers (down 7.6 percentage points).

Working from home overtook walking to become the 2nd most common choice in the 2018 release and has stayed ahead since.

Public transit peaked at 11.2% in 2016 and has since fallen back to 5.1%.

Commute Start Times in Wellesley

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Wellesley?

The bars show when commuters in Wellesley 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		1.2%
5:00-5:29 AM		0.5%
5:30-5:59 AM		1.6%
6:00-6:29 AM		4.0%
6:30-6:59 AM		4.9%
7:00-7:29 AM		18.0%
7:30-7:59 AM		11.4%
8:00-8:29 AM		15.7%
8:30-8:59 AM		10.8%
9:00-9:59 AM		12.5%
10:00-10:59 AM		2.8%
11:00-11:59 AM		2.4%
12:00-3:59 PM		9.6%
4:00-11:59 PM		4.6%

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

The busiest time to head out in Wellesley is 7:00-7:29 AM, when 18.0% of commuters leave home, compared with 14.3% across Massachusetts. Early starts are less common than in Massachusetts: 3.3% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 11.1% there. The morning rush looks much like Massachusetts's: 50.0% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 49.0% there. About 1 in 3 commuters (32.0%) 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 Wellesley, 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 Wellesley 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 Wellesley 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	Wellesley	Massachusetts	United States
2009	8:11 AM	7:47 AM	7:37 AM
2010	8:11 AM	7:48 AM	7:38 AM
2011	8:12 AM	7:48 AM	7:38 AM
2012	8:10 AM	7:49 AM	7:38 AM
2013	8:08 AM	7:49 AM	7:39 AM
2014	8:08 AM	7:48 AM	7:39 AM
2015	8:08 AM	7:48 AM	7:38 AM
2016	8:07 AM	7:47 AM	7:38 AM
2017	8:06 AM	7:47 AM	7:38 AM
2018	8:06 AM	7:46 AM	7:37 AM
2019	8:05 AM	7:45 AM	7:37 AM
2020	8:07 AM	7:46 AM	7:37 AM
2021	8:08 AM	7:45 AM	7:37 AM
2022	8:08 AM	7:46 AM	7:37 AM
2023	8:08 AM	7:47 AM	7:38 AM
2024	8:16 AM	7:47 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Wellesley were on the road by 8:16 AM, 5 minutes later than in 2009 (8:11 AM). Across Massachusetts, the typical start barely moved over the same years. Commuters in Wellesley now leave 38 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 Wellesley has moved 11 minutes later. The 2024 release is the latest typical start for Wellesley in the whole series.

How does Wellesley's commute time compare?

Metric	Wellesley	Massachusetts	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	25.8 min	25.6 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	08:00 AM – 08:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	32.0%	18.6%	15.0%
Walked	10.1%	4.1%	2.4%
Public Transit	5.1%	6.5%	3.2%

The average commute time in Wellesley is about the same as in Massachusetts.

5.1% commute by public transit, lower than the 6.5% in Massachusetts. 10.1% commute by walking, higher than the 4.1% in Massachusetts.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Wellesley, MA Commute Compared With Nearby Cities

Wellesley, MA is the smallest of the 4 cities compared here, 30,372 residents against a local median of 64,842. Wellesley, MA sits close to the middle of its own neighbourhood. No measure below is more than 15% off the local median, so the choice between these cities turns on things this data does not capture.

The largest of those small differences is one-way commute, 3% above the local median at 25.8 min against 25.1 min. Wellesley, MA has the 3rd lowest one-way commute of the 4 areas compared here.

Area	Population	One-way commute	Work from home	Typical departure
Wellesley, MA	30,372	25.8 min #3/4	32.0% #3/4	8:16 AM #4/4
Needham, MA	32,445	27.6 min	32.4%	8:10 AM
Newton, MA	88,909	25.1 min	32.2%	8:14 AM
Waltham, MA	64,842	22.3 min	24.2%	8:05 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Is living in Wellesley, Massachusetts good for avoiding long commute costs?

Commuters here spend an estimated 215 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $6,665 at a typical national wage. That's 1% more than the typical Massachusetts commuter spends.

When is peak congestion during the morning commute in Wellesley, Massachusetts?

Traffic peaks between 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Leaving before or after this window is the single easiest way to avoid the heaviest local congestion, though 08:00 AM – 08:29 AM also sees a secondary bump.

Is Wellesley, Massachusetts a good location for remote and hybrid workers?

About 32.0% of workers here already work from home. Working from home just 2 days a week in Wellesley would save about 86 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,666 at the same national wage assumption used above.