Pawtucket Commute Time Map & Patterns

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

You 9/24/26, 4:19 PM

What does a typical morning commute look like in Pawtucket?

Map AI 9/24/26, 4:19 PM

Commute Time Burden in Pawtucket: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Pawtucket spend about 43 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 181 hours, about 7.5 full days, spent commuting. That is 1% less time on the road than the Rhode Island average of 21.9 minutes each way, a difference of 0.2 minutes.

Pawtucket holds about 6.9% of Rhode Island's population but accounts for roughly 6.8% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Pawtucket would save about 72 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,245 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)
Pawtucket	21.7 min	43.5 min	181 hrs/yr	$5,613	4,133
Rhode Island	21.9 min	43.9 min	183 hrs/yr	$5,668	2,085
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.

Pawtucket Commute Map

On average, it takes 21.7 minutes to get to work in Pawtucket. That's 3% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM, followed by 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 9.2% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Pawtucket

Commute Mode Trends in Pawtucket, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Pawtucket 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	Public Transportation	Other	Walked	Bicycle	Taxi	Motorcycle
2009	89.3%	1.3%	4.3%	1.5%	2.9%	0.3%	0.2%	0.1%
2010	89.5%	1.3%	4.1%	1.5%	3.0%	0.4%	0.1%	0.0%
2011	89.8%	1.3%	4.1%	1.0%	3.1%	0.5%	0.1%	0.1%
2012	89.7%	1.1%	4.2%	1.1%	3.0%	0.6%	0.1%	0.1%
2013	89.4%	1.3%	4.1%	1.1%	3.5%	0.5%	0.0%	0.0%
2014	90.0%	1.3%	3.5%	1.0%	3.9%	0.3%	0.0%	0.0%
2015	89.9%	1.6%	4.0%	0.8%	3.4%	0.2%	0.0%	0.0%
2016	90.2%	1.8%	3.7%	0.8%	3.2%	0.3%	0.0%	0.0%
2017	90.3%	2.1%	3.6%	0.5%	3.3%	0.2%	0.0%	0.0%
2018	91.7%	1.6%	3.4%	0.4%	2.5%	0.3%	0.0%	0.0%
2019	91.9%	1.7%	3.4%	0.5%	2.1%	0.4%	0.0%	0.0%
2020	91.4%	2.6%	3.0%	0.7%	2.0%	0.3%	0.0%	0.1%
2021	88.0%	4.8%	3.7%	1.2%	1.8%	0.4%	0.1%	0.1%
2022	86.5%	6.3%	3.4%	1.4%	1.8%	0.4%	0.1%	0.1%
2023	84.0%	8.5%	3.9%	1.4%	1.7%	0.3%	0.1%	0.2%
2024	83.2%	9.2%	3.3%	2.0%	1.6%	0.3%	0.2%	0.1%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share peaked in 2019 at 91.9%. Overall it fell from 89.3% in 2009 to 83.2% in 2024, down 6.1 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 5 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Pawtucket: its share of workers rose from 1.3% in 2009 to 9.2% in 2024, up 7.9 percentage points. Most of that increase, 7.5 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Walking lost the most ground, falling from 2.9% to 1.6% of workers (down 1.3 percentage points).

Working from home overtook public transit to become the 2nd most common choice in the 2021 release and has stayed ahead since.

Commute Start Times in Pawtucket

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Pawtucket?

The bars show when commuters in Pawtucket 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 Rhode Island for comparison. Hover over or tap a row for the exact numbers.

12:00-4:59 AM		6.4%
5:00-5:29 AM		2.9%
5:30-5:59 AM		5.2%
6:00-6:29 AM		8.8%
6:30-6:59 AM		10.0%
7:00-7:29 AM		14.1%
7:30-7:59 AM		12.1%
8:00-8:29 AM		9.4%
8:30-8:59 AM		5.8%
9:00-9:59 AM		5.8%
10:00-10:59 AM		3.9%
11:00-11:59 AM		1.9%
12:00-3:59 PM		7.7%
4:00-11:59 PM		6.1%

Pawtucket Rhode Island Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Pawtucket is 7:00-7:29 AM, when 14.1% of commuters leave home, compared with 14.9% across Rhode Island. Early starts are more common than in Rhode Island: 14.4% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 11.1% there. The morning rush is more spread out than in Rhode Island: 45.7% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 49.4% 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 Pawtucket, 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 Pawtucket 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 Pawtucket next to Rhode Island 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	Pawtucket	Rhode Island	United States
2009	7:42 AM	7:46 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:41 AM	7:46 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:41 AM	7:47 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:42 AM	7:47 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:42 AM	7:49 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:44 AM	7:49 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:47 AM	7:50 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:44 AM	7:49 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:45 AM	7:48 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:45 AM	7:47 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:42 AM	7:44 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:39 AM	7:44 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:40 AM	7:43 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:34 AM	7:44 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:36 AM	7:44 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:37 AM	7:46 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Pawtucket were on the road by 7:37 AM, 5 minutes earlier than in 2009 (7:42 AM). Across Rhode Island, the typical start barely moved over the same years. Commuters in Pawtucket now leave 1 minute 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 Pawtucket has moved 6 minutes earlier.

How does Pawtucket's commute time compare?

Metric	Pawtucket	Rhode Island	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	21.7 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	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	08:00 AM – 08:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	9.2%	13.0%	15.0%
Walked	1.6%	2.8%	2.4%
Public Transit	3.3%	1.7%	3.2%

The average commute time in Pawtucket is about the same as in Rhode Island.

3.3% commute by public transit, higher than the 1.7% in Rhode Island. 1.6% commute by walking, lower than the 2.8% in Rhode Island.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Pawtucket, RI Commute Compared With Nearby Cities

Pawtucket, RI is the 2nd largest of the 4 cities compared here, 75,796 residents against a local median of 47,128. Pawtucket, RI's work from home, at 9.2%, runs 26% below the 12.4% typical of the cities around it.

The cities themselves spread 9.1% on work from home, so Pawtucket, RI sits at one end of an already wide local range rather than apart from it. Pawtucket, RI has the 3rd highest work from home of the 4 areas compared here.

Area	Population	One-way commute	Work from home	Typical departure
Pawtucket, RI	75,796	21.7 min #3/4	9.2% #3/4	7:37 AM #2/4
Central Falls, RI	22,570	26.2 min	5.2%	7:07 AM
Providence, RI	191,427	20.5 min	14.3%	8:02 AM
East Providence, RI	47,128	20.2 min	12.4%	7:50 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

Is commuting expensive in Pawtucket, Rhode Island?

Commuters here spend an estimated 181 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $5,613 at a typical national wage. That's 1% less than the typical Rhode Island commuter spends.

What time should you leave for work to avoid traffic in Pawtucket, Rhode Island?

Traffic peaks between 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. 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.