Wayne County Commute Time Map & Patterns

Commute Time Burden in Wayne County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Wayne County spend about 47 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 196 hours, about 8.2 full days, spent commuting. That is 12% more time on the road than the Missouri average of 21.0 minutes each way, a difference of 2.6 minutes.

Wayne 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 Wayne County would save about 78 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,433 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)
Wayne County	23.5 min	47.1 min	196 hrs/yr	$6,083	346
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

Compare commute times among different counties

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On average, it takes 23.5 minutes to get to work in Wayne County. That's 5% longer than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

Slower than 77% of counties in Missouri

The most common departure window is 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM, followed by 06:00 AM – 06:29 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 5.1% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Wayne County

• Car: 91.7%
• Worked at Home: 5.1%
• Other: 1.8%
• Public Transportation: 0.9%
• Motorcycle: 0.3%
• Walked: 0.2% unusually low
• Taxi: < 0.1% unusually low
• Bicycle: < 0.1% unusually low

Walking is unusually rare in Wayne County: 7.6 times less than the Missouri average (0.2% vs 1.8%).

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

Biking is essentially absent in Wayne County, versus 0.2% in Missouri.

Few people walk or bike to work in Wayne County: just 0.2%, 8.4 times below the Missouri average of 2.0%.

Commute Mode Trends in Wayne County, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Wayne 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.

• Car
• Worked at Home
• Other
• Public Transportation
• Motorcycle
• Walked
• Taxi
• Bicycle

Show commute mode data by year

Year	Car	Worked at Home	Other	Public Transportation	Motorcycle	Walked	Taxi	Bicycle
2009	84.5%	7.9%	2.8%	1.0%	0.0%	3.8%	0.0%	0.0%
2010	85.6%	8.2%	2.5%	0.6%	0.0%	3.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2011	86.7%	7.2%	2.5%	0.4%	0.0%	3.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2012	88.0%	5.6%	2.3%	0.6%	0.0%	3.6%	0.0%	0.0%
2013	92.0%	4.6%	0.3%	0.9%	0.0%	2.2%	0.0%	0.0%
2014	94.0%	2.9%	0.5%	0.2%	0.0%	2.5%	0.0%	0.0%
2015	93.8%	3.2%	0.7%	0.6%	0.0%	1.7%	0.0%	0.0%
2016	93.1%	4.4%	0.7%	0.9%	0.0%	0.9%	0.0%	0.0%
2017	94.4%	3.8%	0.5%	0.8%	0.0%	0.5%	0.0%	0.0%
2018	90.2%	7.5%	1.0%	0.9%	0.0%	0.5%	0.0%	0.0%
2019	88.5%	8.5%	0.8%	0.8%	0.1%	1.3%	0.0%	0.0%
2020	88.6%	8.9%	0.7%	0.4%	0.1%	1.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2021	89.1%	7.9%	1.2%	0.9%	0.1%	0.8%	0.1%	0.0%
2022	88.5%	8.7%	1.0%	0.8%	0.1%	0.8%	0.0%	0.0%
2023	90.3%	6.9%	0.8%	0.8%	0.1%	1.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2024	91.7%	5.1%	1.8%	0.9%	0.3%	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 2017 at 94.4%. Overall it rose from 84.5% in 2009 to 91.7% in 2024, up 7.2 percentage points. It has risen in each of the last 2 releases.

Walking lost the most ground, falling from 3.8% to 0.2% of workers (down 3.6 percentage points).

Public transit overtook walking to become the 4th most common choice in the 2024 release and has stayed ahead since.

Working from home peaked at 8.9% in 2020 and has since fallen back to 5.1%.

Commute Start Times in Wayne County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Wayne County?

The bars show when commuters in Wayne 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	12:00-4:59 AM Wayne County9.5% Missouri5.2%	9.5%
5:00-5:29 AM	5:00-5:29 AM Wayne County1.6% Missouri3.9%	1.6%
5:30-5:59 AM	5:30-5:59 AM Wayne County6.0% Missouri5.3%	6.0%
6:00-6:29 AM	6:00-6:29 AM Wayne County14.9% Missouri9.0%	14.9%
6:30-6:59 AM	6:30-6:59 AM Wayne County9.6% Missouri10.4%	9.6%
7:00-7:29 AM	7:00-7:29 AM Wayne County12.1% Missouri15.0%	12.1%
7:30-7:59 AM	7:30-7:59 AM Wayne County15.0% Missouri13.6%	15.0%
8:00-8:29 AM	8:00-8:29 AM Wayne County5.6% Missouri10.1%	5.6%
8:30-8:59 AM	8:30-8:59 AM Wayne County3.0% Missouri4.5%	3.0%
9:00-9:59 AM	9:00-9:59 AM Wayne County3.4% Missouri5.2%	3.4%
10:00-10:59 AM	10:00-10:59 AM Wayne County1.8% Missouri2.6%	1.8%
11:00-11:59 AM	11:00-11:59 AM Wayne County0.7% Missouri1.2%	0.7%
12:00-3:59 PM	12:00-3:59 PM Wayne County6.0% Missouri7.0%	6.0%
4:00-11:59 PM	4:00-11:59 PM Wayne County10.7% Missouri6.9%	10.7%

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

The busiest time to head out in Wayne County is 7:30-7:59 AM, when 15.0% of commuters leave home, compared with 13.6% across Missouri. Early starts are more common than in Missouri: 17.1% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 14.5% there. The morning rush is more spread out than in Missouri: 42.3% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 49.1% there. About 1 in 4 commuters (22.7%) 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 Wayne 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 Wayne 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 Wayne 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.

• Wayne County
• Missouri
• United States

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Wayne County	Missouri	United States
2009	7:28 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:23 AM	7:33 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:28 AM	7:33 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:27 AM	7:33 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:23 AM	7:33 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:20 AM	7:33 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:25 AM	7:32 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:25 AM	7:32 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:27 AM	7:32 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:23 AM	7:31 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:22 AM	7:31 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:16 AM	7:32 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:12 AM	7:32 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:15 AM	7:32 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:14 AM	7:32 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:21 AM	7:32 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Wayne County were on the road by 7:21 AM, 7 minutes earlier than in 2009 (7:28 AM). Across Missouri, the typical start barely moved over the same years. Commuters in Wayne County now leave 17 minutes earlier than the typical American commuter (7:38 AM).

How does Wayne County's commute time compare?

Metric	Wayne County	Missouri	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	23.5 min	21.0 min	22.4 min
Departure Window	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM
Secondary Departure Window	06:00 AM – 06:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	5.1%	13.0%	15.0%
Walked	0.2%	1.8%	2.4%
Public Transit	0.9%	0.8%	3.2%

The average commute time in Wayne County is 23.5 minutes, longer than the 21.0 minutes in Missouri.

0.9% commute by public transit, higher than the 0.8% in Missouri. 0.2% commute by walking, lower than the 1.8% in Missouri.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau