Madison County Commute Time Map & Patterns

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

You 9/24/26, 7:55 PM

What does a typical morning commute look like in Madison County?

Map AI 9/24/26, 7:55 PM

Commute Time Burden in Madison County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Madison County spend about 36 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 149 hours, about 6.2 full days, spent commuting. That is 14% less time on the road than the Missouri average of 21.0 minutes each way, a difference of 3.0 minutes.

Madison County holds about 0.2% of Missouri's population and accounts for roughly 0.2% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Madison County would save about 60 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,853 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)
Madison County	17.9 min	35.9 min	149 hrs/yr	$4,633	335
Missouri	21.0 min	41.9 min	175 hrs/yr	$5,415	923
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: Missouri Counties

Fastest commutes among counties in Missouri

Saline County (11.9 min)
Adair County (12.0 min)
Nodaway County (12.1 min)

Slowest commutes among counties in Missouri

Bollinger County (33.1 min)
Ray County (32.2 min)
Maries County (31.9 min)

Compare commute times among different counties

Madison County

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Average commute time

On average, it takes 17.9 minutes to get to work in Madison County. That's 20% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 12:00 AM – 04:59 AM, followed by 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 11.0% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Madison County

Taking a taxi is essentially absent in Madison County, versus 0.2% in Missouri.

Commute Mode Trends in Madison County, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Madison 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	Other	Public Transportation	Motorcycle	Bicycle	Taxi
2009	94.0%	1.6%	2.6%	1.8%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2010	92.1%	2.4%	3.7%	1.5%	0.3%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2011	92.7%	2.5%	4.2%	0.2%	0.3%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2012	92.7%	2.9%	4.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2013	92.3%	2.4%	3.8%	1.0%	0.4%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2014	92.4%	3.5%	2.5%	1.0%	0.6%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2015	94.2%	3.0%	0.8%	1.9%	0.0%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2016	93.7%	3.2%	1.2%	1.9%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2017	93.5%	2.9%	1.1%	2.4%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2018	94.8%	3.3%	0.6%	1.3%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2019	94.7%	3.1%	0.7%	1.5%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2020	92.4%	4.9%	0.8%	0.9%	0.9%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2021	91.4%	6.7%	0.5%	0.8%	0.6%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2022	90.7%	7.4%	0.6%	0.6%	0.7%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2023	88.3%	9.1%	1.4%	0.5%	0.7%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2024	84.1%	11.0%	1.9%	1.8%	0.7%	0.2%	0.2%	0.0%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share peaked in 2018 at 94.8%. Overall it fell from 94.0% in 2009 to 84.1% in 2024, down 9.9 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 6 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Madison County: its share of workers rose from 1.6% in 2009 to 11.0% in 2024, up 9.4 percentage points. Most of that increase, 7.9 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Walking lost the most ground, falling from 2.6% to 1.9% of workers (down 0.7 percentage points).

Working from home overtook walking to become the 2nd most common choice in the 2014 release and has stayed ahead since.

Commute Start Times in Madison County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Madison County?

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

12:00-4:59 AM		16.4%
5:00-5:29 AM		5.4%
5:30-5:59 AM		6.8%
6:00-6:29 AM		7.7%
6:30-6:59 AM		7.4%
7:00-7:29 AM		11.4%
7:30-7:59 AM		14.4%
8:00-8:29 AM		6.5%
8:30-8:59 AM		5.8%
9:00-9:59 AM		3.8%
10:00-10:59 AM		1.5%
11:00-11:59 AM		0.0%
12:00-3:59 PM		5.0%
4:00-11:59 PM		8.0%

Madison County Missouri Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Madison County is 12:00-4:59 AM, when 16.4% of commuters leave home, compared with 5.2% across Missouri. Early starts are more common than in Missouri: 28.5% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 14.5% there. The morning rush is more spread out than in Missouri: 39.6% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 49.1% there. About 1 in 5 commuters (18.4%) 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 Madison 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 Madison 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 Madison County next to Missouri 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	Madison County	Missouri	United States
2009	7:14 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:13 AM	7:33 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:10 AM	7:33 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:07 AM	7:33 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:07 AM	7:33 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:07 AM	7:33 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:18 AM	7:32 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:18 AM	7:32 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:19 AM	7:32 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:22 AM	7:31 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:24 AM	7:31 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:24 AM	7:32 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:30 AM	7:32 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:19 AM	7:32 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:21 AM	7:32 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:17 AM	7:32 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Madison County were on the road by 7:17 AM, 3 minutes later than in 2009 (7:14 AM). Across Missouri, the typical start barely moved over the same years. Commuters in Madison County now leave 21 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 Madison County has moved 6 minutes earlier.

How does Madison County's commute time compare?

Metric	Madison County	Missouri	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	17.9 min	21.0 min	22.4 min
Departure Window	12:00 AM – 04:59 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	11.0%	13.0%	15.0%
Walked	1.9%	1.8%	2.4%
Public Transit	0.7%	0.8%	3.2%

The average commute time in Madison County is 17.9 minutes, shorter than the 21.0 minutes in Missouri.

0.7% commute by public transit, lower than the 0.8% in Missouri. 1.9% commute by walking, higher than the 1.8% in Missouri.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Madison County, MO Commute Compared With Nearby Counties

Madison County, MO is the 3rd largest of the 6 counties compared here, 12,729 residents against a local median of 10,862. Where Madison County, MO breaks from the counties next to it is work from home, sitting 57% above the local median of 7.0% at 11.0%.

One-way commute tells the same story from another angle: 17.9 min against a local median of 23.5 min, 24% below it. The one measure here that carries a verdict is one-way commute, and at 24% below the local median it puts Madison County, MO at the better end of the local range. The counties themselves spread 6.4% on work from home, so Madison County, MO sits at one end of an already wide local range rather than apart from it. Madison County, MO has the 2nd highest work from home of the 6 areas compared here.

Area	Population	One-way commute	Work from home	Typical departure
Madison County, MO	12,729	17.9 min #1/6	11.0% #2/6	7:17 AM #4/6
Bollinger County, MO	10,559	33.1 min	11.5%	7:08 AM
St. Francois County, MO	66,999	17.9 min	7.6%	7:19 AM
Wayne County, MO	10,862	23.5 min	5.1%	7:21 AM
Iron County, MO	9,446	22.7 min	7.0%	7:16 AM
Ste. Genevieve County, MO	18,571	23.6 min	6.5%	6:58 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Madison County, Missouri.

Is living in Madison County, Missouri good for avoiding long commute costs?

Commuters here spend an estimated 149 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $4,633 at a typical national wage. That's 14% less than the typical Missouri commuter spends.

When is peak congestion during the morning commute in Madison County, Missouri?

Traffic peaks between 12:00 AM – 04:59 AM in Madison County, Missouri. 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.

How do commute times compare across counties in Missouri?

Among counties in Missouri, the shortest average commutes are in Saline County (11.9 min), Adair County (12.0 min), Nodaway County (12.1 min). The longest are in Bollinger County (33.1 min), Ray County (32.2 min), Maries County (31.9 min).