Johnston County Commute Time Map & Patterns

Commute Time Burden in Johnston County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Johnston County spend about 62 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 260 hours, about 10.8 full days, spent commuting. That is 43% more time on the road than the North Carolina average of 21.9 minutes each way, a difference of 9.3 minutes.

Johnston County holds about 2.2% of North Carolina's population but accounts for roughly 3.1% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Johnston County would save about 104 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $3,219 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)
Johnston County	31.1 min	62.3 min	260 hrs/yr	$8,047	1,765
North Carolina	21.9 min	43.7 min	182 hrs/yr	$5,645	1,609
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: North Carolina Counties

Compare commute times among different counties

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On average, it takes 31.1 minutes to get to work in Johnston County. That's 39% longer than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

Among the 5 slowest counties in North Carolina

The most common departure window is 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM, followed by 06:00 AM – 06:29 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 14.7% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Johnston County

• Car: 83.8%
• Worked at Home: 14.7%
• Walked: 0.7%
• Other: 0.4%
• Motorcycle: 0.1%
• Public Transportation: < 0.1% unusually low
• Bicycle: < 0.1%
• Taxi: < 0.1% unusually low

Public transit is unusually rare in Johnston County: 6.5 times less than the North Carolina average (0.1% vs 0.7%).

Taking a taxi is unusually rare in Johnston County: 4.7 times less than the North Carolina average (0.0% vs 0.2%).

Commute Mode Trends in Johnston County, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Johnston 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
• Walked
• Other
• Public Transportation
• Motorcycle
• Bicycle
• Taxi

Show commute mode data by year

Year	Car	Worked at Home	Walked	Other	Public Transportation	Motorcycle	Bicycle	Taxi
2009	94.2%	3.7%	0.8%	0.8%	0.3%	0.2%	0.0%	0.0%
2010	94.4%	3.6%	0.7%	0.8%	0.1%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%
2011	94.0%	3.6%	0.7%	1.2%	0.2%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%
2012	94.1%	3.3%	0.6%	1.5%	0.2%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%
2013	93.9%	3.8%	0.6%	1.3%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%
2014	93.3%	4.3%	0.7%	1.4%	0.2%	0.1%	0.0%	0.1%
2015	92.7%	5.2%	0.7%	1.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.0%	0.0%
2016	93.2%	5.4%	0.6%	0.4%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	0.0%
2017	92.7%	5.9%	0.5%	0.5%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	0.0%
2018	92.2%	6.1%	0.7%	0.6%	0.2%	0.0%	0.1%	0.0%
2019	92.7%	5.9%	0.5%	0.5%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	0.0%
2020	91.4%	7.1%	0.8%	0.4%	0.2%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2021	89.6%	8.9%	0.8%	0.5%	0.1%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%
2022	87.4%	10.9%	0.9%	0.5%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.0%
2023	85.5%	13.1%	0.7%	0.5%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.0%
2024	83.8%	14.7%	0.7%	0.4%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.0%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share peaked in 2010 at 94.4%. Overall it fell from 94.2% in 2009 to 83.8% in 2024, down 10.4 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 5 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Johnston County: its share of workers rose from 3.7% in 2009 to 14.7% in 2024, up 11.0 percentage points. Most of that increase, 8.8 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Commute Start Times in Johnston County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Johnston County?

The bars show when commuters in Johnston 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 North Carolina for comparison. Hover over or tap a row for the exact numbers.

12:00-4:59 AM	12:00-4:59 AM Johnston County3.9% North Carolina4.4%	3.9%
5:00-5:29 AM	5:00-5:29 AM Johnston County5.0% North Carolina3.5%	5.0%
5:30-5:59 AM	5:30-5:59 AM Johnston County6.7% North Carolina4.6%	6.7%
6:00-6:29 AM	6:00-6:29 AM Johnston County14.1% North Carolina9.0%	14.1%
6:30-6:59 AM	6:30-6:59 AM Johnston County11.8% North Carolina10.2%	11.8%
7:00-7:29 AM	7:00-7:29 AM Johnston County15.3% North Carolina15.3%	15.3%
7:30-7:59 AM	7:30-7:59 AM Johnston County11.2% North Carolina12.8%	11.2%
8:00-8:29 AM	8:00-8:29 AM Johnston County11.1% North Carolina11.7%	11.1%
8:30-8:59 AM	8:30-8:59 AM Johnston County3.4% North Carolina5.4%	3.4%
9:00-9:59 AM	9:00-9:59 AM Johnston County3.3% North Carolina6.4%	3.3%
10:00-10:59 AM	10:00-10:59 AM Johnston County2.2% North Carolina2.8%	2.2%
11:00-11:59 AM	11:00-11:59 AM Johnston County1.3% North Carolina1.4%	1.3%
12:00-3:59 PM	12:00-3:59 PM Johnston County5.3% North Carolina6.3%	5.3%
4:00-11:59 PM	4:00-11:59 PM Johnston County5.4% North Carolina6.4%	5.4%

Johnston County North Carolina Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Johnston County is 7:00-7:29 AM, when 15.3% of commuters leave home, compared with 15.3% across North Carolina. Early starts are more common than in North Carolina: 15.7% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 12.5% there. The morning rush looks much like North Carolina's: 49.4% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 50.0% there. About 1 in 6 commuters (17.5%) 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 Johnston 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 Johnston 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 Johnston County next to North Carolina 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.

• Johnston County
• North Carolina
• United States

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Johnston County	North Carolina	United States
2009	7:16 AM	7:36 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:18 AM	7:36 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:16 AM	7:37 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:16 AM	7:37 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:17 AM	7:38 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:15 AM	7:38 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:14 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:14 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:12 AM	7:37 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:11 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:10 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:11 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:14 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:13 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:16 AM	7:37 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:17 AM	7:37 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Johnston County were on the road by 7:17 AM, almost exactly the same as in 2009. Across North Carolina, meanwhile, the typical commuter now leaves 1 minute later than in 2009. Commuters in Johnston 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 Johnston County has moved 6 minutes later.

How does Johnston County's commute time compare?

Metric	Johnston County	North Carolina	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	31.1 min	21.9 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	06:00 AM – 06:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	14.7%	16.3%	15.0%
Walked	0.7%	1.6%	2.4%
Public Transit	< 0.1%	0.7%	3.2%

The average commute time in Johnston County is 31.1 minutes, longer than the 21.9 minutes in North Carolina.

0.1% commute by public transit, lower than the 0.7% in North Carolina. 0.7% commute by walking, lower than the 1.6% in North Carolina.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau