Essex Commute Time Map & Patterns

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

You 9/24/26, 4:01 PM

How many minutes is the average drive to work in Essex?

Map AI 9/24/26, 4:01 PM

Commute Time Burden in Essex: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Essex spend about 53 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 221 hours, about 9.2 full days, spent commuting. That is 6% less time on the road than the Maryland average of 28.3 minutes each way, a difference of 1.8 minutes.

Essex holds about 0.6% of Maryland's population and accounts for roughly 0.6% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Essex would save about 88 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,736 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)
Essex	26.5 min	53.0 min	221 hrs/yr	$6,840	3,650
Maryland	28.3 min	56.5 min	236 hrs/yr	$7,301	2,353
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.

Essex Commute Map

On average, it takes 26.5 minutes to get to work in Essex. That's 18% longer than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM, followed by 12:00 PM – 03:59 PM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 7.5% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Essex

Riding a motorcycle is essentially absent in Essex, versus 0.1% in Maryland.

Taking a taxi is unusually rare in Essex: 5.8 times less than the Maryland average (0.1% vs 0.5%).

Commute Mode Trends in Essex, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Essex 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	Other	Walked	Bicycle	Taxi	Motorcycle
2009	85.8%	1.2%	7.4%	2.2%	2.6%	0.3%	0.3%	0.2%
2010	85.9%	1.6%	6.9%	1.9%	2.9%	0.4%	0.2%	0.3%
2011	86.8%	1.6%	6.7%	1.9%	2.5%	0.0%	0.2%	0.3%
2012	87.6%	1.7%	6.4%	1.4%	2.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.5%
2013	87.0%	2.1%	6.0%	1.6%	2.1%	0.1%	0.3%	0.8%
2014	87.3%	2.4%	6.2%	1.4%	1.6%	0.1%	0.4%	0.7%
2015	87.8%	2.1%	5.8%	2.3%	0.9%	0.1%	0.4%	0.6%
2016	87.6%	2.5%	6.1%	2.1%	0.8%	0.1%	0.4%	0.5%
2017	86.6%	2.7%	7.0%	2.3%	0.7%	0.0%	0.4%	0.3%
2018	86.3%	2.6%	7.7%	1.8%	1.1%	0.0%	0.4%	0.1%
2019	85.8%	2.7%	8.0%	2.0%	1.1%	0.0%	0.3%	0.1%
2020	83.5%	4.7%	8.9%	1.3%	1.3%	0.0%	0.2%	0.1%
2021	82.4%	5.3%	8.9%	1.0%	2.0%	0.0%	0.3%	0.0%
2022	83.0%	5.7%	7.6%	1.7%	1.8%	0.0%	0.1%	0.0%
2023	83.3%	6.7%	6.5%	2.0%	1.2%	0.3%	0.1%	0.0%
2024	85.1%	7.5%	4.2%	1.8%	1.1%	0.3%	0.1%	0.0%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share was highest in 2015 at 87.8% and lowest in 2021 at 82.4%. Overall it fell from 85.8% in 2009 to 85.1% in 2024, down 0.7 percentage points. It has risen in each of the last 3 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Essex: its share of workers rose from 1.2% in 2009 to 7.5% in 2024, up 6.3 percentage points. Most of that increase, 4.8 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Public transit lost the most ground, falling from 7.4% to 4.2% of workers (down 3.2 percentage points).

Working from home overtook public transit to become the 2nd most common choice in the 2023 release and has stayed ahead since.

Commute Start Times in Essex

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Essex?

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

12:00-4:59 AM		6.8%
5:00-5:29 AM		7.6%
5:30-5:59 AM		8.4%
6:00-6:29 AM		9.2%
6:30-6:59 AM		9.5%
7:00-7:29 AM		13.1%
7:30-7:59 AM		10.1%
8:00-8:29 AM		7.3%
8:30-8:59 AM		7.7%
9:00-9:59 AM		3.5%
10:00-10:59 AM		1.4%
11:00-11:59 AM		0.6%
12:00-3:59 PM		10.2%
4:00-11:59 PM		4.6%

Essex Maryland Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Essex is 7:00-7:29 AM, when 13.1% of commuters leave home, compared with 14.0% across Maryland. Early starts are more common than in Maryland: 22.8% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 14.8% there. The morning rush is more spread out than in Maryland: 40.0% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 45.3% there. About 1 in 5 commuters (20.3%) 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 Essex, 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 Essex 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 Essex next to Maryland 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	Essex	Maryland	United States
2009	7:23 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:28 AM	7:36 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:30 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:26 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:31 AM	7:35 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:25 AM	7:35 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:17 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:14 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:13 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:14 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:16 AM	7:35 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:18 AM	7:36 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:20 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:22 AM	7:38 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:21 AM	7:39 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:19 AM	7:39 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Essex were on the road by 7:19 AM, 4 minutes earlier than in 2009 (7:23 AM). That goes against the trend across Maryland, where the typical commuter now leaves 4 minutes later than in 2009. Commuters in Essex now leave 18 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 Essex has moved 3 minutes later.

How does Essex's commute time compare?

Metric	Essex	Maryland	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	26.5 min	28.3 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	12:00 PM – 03:59 PM	08:00 AM – 08:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	7.5%	19.3%	15.0%
Walked	1.1%	2.0%	2.4%
Public Transit	4.2%	4.2%	3.2%

The average commute time in Essex is 26.5 minutes, shorter than the 28.3 minutes in Maryland.

The share of commuters using public transit is about the same as Maryland. 1.1% commute by walking, lower than the 2.0% in Maryland.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Essex, MD Commute Compared With Nearby Cities

Essex, MD is the 2nd largest of the 4 cities compared here, 39,226 residents against a local median of 29,130. The measure that sets Essex, MD apart most is work from home: 7.5%, 33% below the local median of 11.2%.

The cities themselves spread 4.1% on work from home, so Essex, MD sits at one end of an already wide local range rather than apart from it. Essex, MD has the 4th highest work from home of the 4 areas compared here.

Area	Population	One-way commute	Work from home	Typical departure
Essex, MD	39,226	26.5 min #3/4	7.5% #4/4	7:19 AM #2/4
Middle River, MD	29,130	30.1 min	14.4%	7:26 AM
Dundalk, MD	63,263	22.6 min	10.3%	7:15 AM
Rosedale, MD	21,262	25.0 min	11.2%	7:36 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Essex, Maryland.

Is living in Essex, Maryland good for avoiding long commute costs?

Commuters here spend an estimated 221 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $6,840 at a typical national wage. That's 6% less than the typical Maryland commuter spends.

When is peak congestion during the morning commute in Essex, Maryland?

Traffic peaks between 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM in Essex, Maryland. Leaving before or after this window is the single easiest way to avoid the heaviest local congestion, though 12:00 PM – 03:59 PM also sees a secondary bump.