Josephine County Commute Time Map & Patterns

Help

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

You 9/24/26, 8:17 PM

How much time do drivers in Josephine County spend on the road daily?

Map AI 9/24/26, 8:17 PM

Commute Time Burden in Josephine County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Josephine County spend about 34 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 141 hours, about 5.9 full days, spent commuting. That is 16% less time on the road than the Oregon average of 20.1 minutes each way, a difference of 3.2 minutes.

Josephine County holds about 2.1% of Oregon's population but accounts for roughly 1.7% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Josephine County would save about 56 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,748 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)
Josephine County	16.9 min	33.8 min	141 hrs/yr	$4,370	758
Oregon	20.1 min	40.3 min	168 hrs/yr	$5,203	967
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: Oregon Counties

Fastest commutes among counties in Oregon

Lake County (7.7 min)
Harney County (8.6 min)
Baker County (8.9 min)

Slowest commutes among counties in Oregon

Columbia County (31.7 min)
Clackamas County (23.9 min)
Polk County (22.2 min)

Compare commute times among different counties

Josephine County

Click a county to open it Explore the map →

Average commute time

On average, it takes 16.9 minutes to get to work in Josephine County. That's 25% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM, followed by 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 12.1% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Josephine County

Public transit is unusually rare in Josephine County: 5.5 times less than the Oregon average (0.4% vs 2.2%).

Commute Mode Trends in Josephine County, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Josephine 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	Bicycle	Public Transportation	Motorcycle	Taxi
2009	88.8%	6.0%	3.1%	0.6%	0.8%	0.0%	0.6%	0.1%
2010	88.8%	6.0%	3.2%	0.5%	0.7%	0.0%	0.7%	0.0%
2011	88.9%	6.2%	2.9%	0.5%	0.8%	0.0%	0.7%	0.0%
2012	88.9%	6.4%	2.3%	0.6%	0.9%	0.2%	0.6%	0.0%
2013	89.5%	6.2%	2.2%	0.6%	0.8%	0.2%	0.5%	0.0%
2014	89.3%	6.3%	2.1%	0.8%	0.7%	0.4%	0.4%	0.0%
2015	89.5%	5.8%	2.0%	1.2%	1.0%	0.3%	0.2%	0.0%
2016	89.3%	5.4%	2.5%	1.5%	0.7%	0.5%	0.0%	0.0%
2017	88.2%	5.6%	3.1%	1.4%	0.9%	0.5%	0.0%	0.2%
2018	87.7%	5.8%	3.1%	1.3%	1.3%	0.4%	0.1%	0.3%
2019	87.7%	5.8%	3.5%	1.0%	1.3%	0.3%	0.1%	0.3%
2020	86.1%	8.1%	3.1%	1.0%	0.9%	0.4%	0.1%	0.3%
2021	86.2%	8.9%	2.2%	0.9%	1.0%	0.3%	0.1%	0.4%
2022	84.6%	10.8%	2.2%	0.8%	0.7%	0.4%	0.3%	0.2%
2023	84.4%	11.2%	2.1%	1.0%	0.4%	0.5%	0.4%	0.1%
2024	83.8%	12.1%	1.6%	1.1%	0.5%	0.4%	0.3%	0.2%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share peaked in 2013 at 89.5%. Overall it fell from 88.8% in 2009 to 83.8% in 2024, down 5.0 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 3 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Josephine County: its share of workers rose from 6.0% in 2009 to 12.1% in 2024, up 6.1 percentage points. Most of that increase, 6.3 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Walking lost the most ground, falling from 3.1% to 1.6% of workers (down 1.5 percentage points).

Commute Start Times in Josephine County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Josephine County?

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

12:00-4:59 AM		7.1%
5:00-5:29 AM		4.1%
5:30-5:59 AM		5.8%
6:00-6:29 AM		8.5%
6:30-6:59 AM		10.1%
7:00-7:29 AM		11.2%
7:30-7:59 AM		14.1%
8:00-8:29 AM		9.7%
8:30-8:59 AM		4.2%
9:00-9:59 AM		5.9%
10:00-10:59 AM		4.6%
11:00-11:59 AM		1.7%
12:00-3:59 PM		7.3%
4:00-11:59 PM		6.0%

Josephine County Oregon Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Josephine County is 7:30-7:59 AM, when 14.1% of commuters leave home, compared with 13.0% across Oregon. Early starts are more common than in Oregon: 17.0% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 14.7% there. The morning rush looks much like Oregon's: 45.1% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 46.3% there. About 1 in 4 commuters (25.3%) 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 Josephine 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 Josephine 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 Josephine County next to Oregon 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	Josephine County	Oregon	United States
2009	7:45 AM	7:40 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:42 AM	7:41 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:38 AM	7:41 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:37 AM	7:42 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:34 AM	7:42 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:33 AM	7:42 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:35 AM	7:41 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:38 AM	7:40 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:38 AM	7:40 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:39 AM	7:39 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:38 AM	7:38 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:39 AM	7:39 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:38 AM	7:40 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:39 AM	7:40 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:40 AM	7:41 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:37 AM	7:42 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Josephine County were on the road by 7:37 AM, 7 minutes earlier than in 2009 (7:45 AM). That goes against the trend across Oregon, where the typical commuter now leaves 2 minutes later than in 2009. Commuters in Josephine County now leave at about the same time as the typical American commuter (7:38 AM).

How does Josephine County's commute time compare?

Metric	Josephine County	Oregon	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	16.9 min	20.1 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	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	12.1%	19.0%	15.0%
Walked	1.6%	3.3%	2.4%
Public Transit	0.4%	2.2%	3.2%

The average commute time in Josephine County is 16.9 minutes, shorter than the 20.1 minutes in Oregon.

0.4% commute by public transit, lower than the 2.2% in Oregon. 1.6% commute by walking, lower than the 3.3% in Oregon.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Josephine County, OR Commute Compared With Nearby Counties

Josephine County, OR is the 3rd largest of the 6 counties compared here, 88,176 residents against a local median of 64,827. Nothing separates Josephine County, OR sharply from the counties around it. Each measure below lands within 15% of the local median, close enough that the differences are within what survey sampling alone would produce.

The largest of those small differences is one-way commute, 9% above the local median at 16.9 min against 15.5 min. Josephine County, OR has the 4th lowest one-way commute of the 6 areas compared here.

Area	Population	One-way commute	Work from home	Typical departure
Josephine County, OR	88,176	16.9 min #4/6	12.1% #4/6	7:37 AM #2/6
Curry County, OR	23,379	12.8 min	16.5%	7:46 AM
Del Norte County, CA	27,106	12.1 min	7.4%	7:48 AM
Jackson County, OR	222,645	17.1 min	12.9%	7:40 AM
Coos County, OR	64,827	15.5 min	8.1%	7:44 AM
Douglas County, OR	111,795	17.1 min	12.3%	7:36 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Josephine County, Oregon.

Is commuting expensive in Josephine County, Oregon?

Commuters here spend an estimated 141 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $4,370 at a typical national wage. That's 16% less than the typical Oregon commuter spends.

What time should you leave for work to avoid traffic in Josephine County, Oregon?

Traffic peaks between 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM in Josephine County, Oregon. Leaving before or after this window is the single easiest way to avoid the heaviest local congestion, though 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM also sees a secondary bump.

Do people use public transit in Josephine County, Oregon?

Public transit usage is significantly lower here than typical: about 0.4% of commuters use it versus 2.2% in Oregon, meaning a personal vehicle is essential for most workers.

Which counties in Oregon have the fastest and slowest commutes?

Among counties in Oregon, the shortest average commutes are in Lake County (7.7 min), Harney County (8.6 min), Baker County (8.9 min). The longest are in Columbia County (31.7 min), Clackamas County (23.9 min), Polk County (22.2 min).