Darke County Commute Time Map & Patterns

Commute Time Burden in Darke County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Darke County spend about 37 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 153 hours, about 6.4 full days, spent commuting. That is 13% less time on the road than the Ohio average of 21.1 minutes each way, a difference of 2.8 minutes.

Darke County holds about 0.4% of Ohio's population and accounts for roughly 0.4% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Darke County would save about 61 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,892 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)
Darke County	18.3 min	36.6 min	153 hrs/yr	$4,730	726
Ohio	21.1 min	42.2 min	176 hrs/yr	$5,447	1,212
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: Ohio Counties

Compare commute times among different counties

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On average, it takes 18.3 minutes to get to work in Darke County. That's 18% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

Faster than 78% of counties in Ohio

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 5.6% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Darke County

• Car: 91.2%
• Worked at Home: 5.6%
• Walked: 1.9%
• Other: 1.0%
• Public Transportation: 0.2% unusually low
• Bicycle: < 0.1% unusually low
• Motorcycle: < 0.1%
• Taxi: < 0.1% unusually low

Public transit is unusually rare in Darke County: 6.4 times less than the Ohio average (0.2% vs 1.0%).

Taking a taxi is essentially absent in Darke County, versus 0.2% in Ohio.

Biking is unusually rare in Darke County: 4.6 times less than the Ohio average (0.1% vs 0.3%).

Commute Mode Trends in Darke County, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Darke 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	92.2%	4.5%	1.6%	0.7%	0.6%	0.1%	0.2%	0.0%
2010	92.2%	4.6%	1.7%	0.7%	0.5%	0.1%	0.2%	0.0%
2011	92.3%	4.6%	1.5%	0.6%	0.6%	0.2%	0.2%	0.1%
2012	92.4%	4.7%	1.7%	0.5%	0.6%	0.1%	0.1%	0.0%
2013	92.5%	4.1%	1.6%	0.7%	0.7%	0.2%	0.1%	0.0%
2014	92.2%	4.3%	1.9%	0.5%	0.7%	0.2%	0.2%	0.0%
2015	91.4%	4.4%	2.2%	0.6%	1.0%	0.2%	0.1%	0.0%
2016	91.4%	4.3%	2.4%	0.7%	0.7%	0.3%	0.3%	0.0%
2017	92.0%	4.2%	2.2%	0.7%	0.6%	0.1%	0.2%	0.0%
2018	91.9%	4.2%	2.3%	0.8%	0.4%	0.2%	0.2%	0.0%
2019	91.8%	4.2%	2.2%	1.0%	0.5%	0.2%	0.2%	0.0%
2020	92.4%	4.0%	1.8%	1.3%	0.1%	0.2%	0.2%	0.0%
2021	91.6%	4.8%	2.1%	1.1%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	0.0%
2022	91.0%	5.3%	1.9%	1.3%	0.2%	0.2%	0.1%	0.0%
2023	91.0%	5.6%	2.0%	1.2%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	0.0%
2024	91.2%	5.6%	1.9%	1.0%	0.2%	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 was highest in 2013 at 92.5% and lowest in 2022 at 91.0%. Overall it fell from 92.2% in 2009 to 91.2% in 2024, down 1.0 percentage points.

Working from home gained the most ground in Darke County: its share of workers rose from 4.5% in 2009 to 5.6% in 2024, up 1.1 percentage points. Most of that increase, 1.4 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Commute Start Times in Darke County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Darke County?

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

12:00-4:59 AM	12:00-4:59 AM Darke County7.6% Ohio5.2%	7.6%
5:00-5:29 AM	5:00-5:29 AM Darke County6.8% Ohio3.9%	6.8%
5:30-5:59 AM	5:30-5:59 AM Darke County8.4% Ohio5.3%	8.4%
6:00-6:29 AM	6:00-6:29 AM Darke County11.0% Ohio8.4%	11.0%
6:30-6:59 AM	6:30-6:59 AM Darke County9.6% Ohio10.1%	9.6%
7:00-7:29 AM	7:00-7:29 AM Darke County13.0% Ohio13.4%	13.0%
7:30-7:59 AM	7:30-7:59 AM Darke County10.4% Ohio12.2%	10.4%
8:00-8:29 AM	8:00-8:29 AM Darke County6.2% Ohio10.5%	6.2%
8:30-8:59 AM	8:30-8:59 AM Darke County3.3% Ohio5.5%	3.3%
9:00-9:59 AM	9:00-9:59 AM Darke County3.5% Ohio6.0%	3.5%
10:00-10:59 AM	10:00-10:59 AM Darke County2.2% Ohio2.8%	2.2%
11:00-11:59 AM	11:00-11:59 AM Darke County1.3% Ohio1.5%	1.3%
12:00-3:59 PM	12:00-3:59 PM Darke County8.3% Ohio7.7%	8.3%
4:00-11:59 PM	4:00-11:59 PM Darke County8.3% Ohio7.8%	8.3%

Darke County Ohio Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Darke County is 7:00-7:29 AM, when 13.0% of commuters leave home, compared with 13.4% across Ohio. Early starts are more common than in Ohio: 22.9% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 14.3% there. The morning rush is more spread out than in Ohio: 39.2% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 46.2% there. About 1 in 4 commuters (23.7%) 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 Darke 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 Darke 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 Darke County next to Ohio 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.

• Darke County
• Ohio
• United States

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Darke County	Ohio	United States
2009	7:24 AM	7:42 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:24 AM	7:42 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:24 AM	7:42 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:24 AM	7:42 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:26 AM	7:42 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:23 AM	7:42 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:22 AM	7:42 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:22 AM	7:41 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:22 AM	7:41 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:20 AM	7:40 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:21 AM	7:40 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:20 AM	7:39 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:23 AM	7:39 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:22 AM	7:39 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:20 AM	7:39 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:15 AM	7:39 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Darke County were on the road by 7:15 AM, 9 minutes earlier than in 2009 (7:24 AM). The shift is sharper than across Ohio, where the typical start moved 3 minutes earlier. Commuters in Darke County now leave 23 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 Darke County has moved 6 minutes earlier. The 2024 release is the earliest typical start for Darke County in the whole series.

How does Darke County's commute time compare?

Metric	Darke County	Ohio	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	18.3 min	21.1 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	5.6%	13.0%	15.0%
Walked	1.9%	2.0%	2.4%
Public Transit	0.2%	1.0%	3.2%

The average commute time in Darke County is 18.3 minutes, shorter than the 21.1 minutes in Ohio.

0.2% commute by public transit, lower than the 1.0% in Ohio. 1.9% commute by walking, lower than the 2.0% in Ohio.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau