Hilton Head Island Commute Time Map & Patterns

Help

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

You 9/24/26, 3:12 PM

How many minutes is the average drive to work in Hilton Head Island?

Map AI 9/24/26, 3:12 PM

Commute Time Burden in Hilton Head Island: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Hilton Head Island spend about 33 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 137 hours, about 5.7 full days, spent commuting. That is 26% less time on the road than the South Carolina average of 22.3 minutes each way, a difference of 5.9 minutes.

Hilton Head Island holds about 0.7% of South Carolina's population but accounts for roughly 0.5% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Hilton Head Island would save about 55 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,693 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)
Hilton Head Island	16.4 min	32.8 min	137 hrs/yr	$4,232	3,475
South Carolina	22.3 min	44.5 min	186 hrs/yr	$5,753	1,499
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.

Hilton Head Island Commute Map

On average, it takes 16.4 minutes to get to work in Hilton Head Island. That's 27% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM, followed by 08:00 AM – 08:29 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 20.1% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Hilton Head Island

Riding a motorcycle is essentially absent in Hilton Head Island, versus 0.1% in South Carolina.

Biking is unusually common in Hilton Head Island: 6.8 times more than the South Carolina average (1.3% vs 0.2%).

Commute Mode Trends in Hilton Head Island, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Hilton Head Island 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	Taxi	Motorcycle
2009	88.2%	7.2%	1.8%	1.0%	0.9%	0.5%	0.3%	0.0%
2010	88.3%	7.3%	1.6%	0.9%	1.2%	0.6%	0.0%	0.0%
2011	86.8%	8.1%	1.9%	0.9%	1.8%	0.4%	0.0%	0.1%
2012	85.9%	7.7%	2.3%	0.9%	2.3%	0.6%	0.1%	0.2%
2013	85.5%	7.8%	2.3%	1.1%	2.1%	1.0%	0.1%	0.1%
2014	83.7%	9.9%	2.4%	0.9%	2.3%	0.5%	0.0%	0.2%
2015	82.8%	10.7%	2.3%	1.1%	2.1%	0.7%	0.1%	0.2%
2016	83.8%	9.8%	2.3%	1.3%	1.6%	0.8%	0.2%	0.2%
2017	84.3%	10.4%	1.6%	1.6%	1.0%	1.0%	0.1%	0.0%
2018	85.7%	10.3%	1.1%	0.9%	1.3%	0.4%	0.3%	0.0%
2019	84.7%	11.7%	0.9%	1.2%	0.7%	0.5%	0.3%	0.0%
2020	84.6%	11.8%	0.9%	1.4%	0.7%	0.5%	0.1%	0.0%
2021	80.2%	15.8%	0.9%	1.6%	1.0%	0.5%	0.0%	0.0%
2022	79.7%	16.0%	1.2%	1.7%	0.9%	0.4%	0.2%	0.0%
2023	77.7%	17.7%	1.5%	1.8%	0.8%	0.4%	0.1%	0.0%
2024	74.9%	20.1%	1.7%	1.4%	1.3%	0.4%	0.2%	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 88.3%. Overall it fell from 88.2% in 2009 to 74.9% in 2024, down 13.3 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 6 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Hilton Head Island: its share of workers rose from 7.2% in 2009 to 20.1% in 2024, up 12.9 percentage points. Most of that increase, 8.4 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Commute Start Times in Hilton Head Island

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Hilton Head Island?

The bars show when commuters in Hilton Head Island 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 South Carolina for comparison. Hover over or tap a row for the exact numbers.

12:00-4:59 AM		2.2%
5:00-5:29 AM		0.7%
5:30-5:59 AM		2.9%
6:00-6:29 AM		3.8%
6:30-6:59 AM		7.0%
7:00-7:29 AM		13.7%
7:30-7:59 AM		16.1%
8:00-8:29 AM		15.4%
8:30-8:59 AM		8.9%
9:00-9:59 AM		11.1%
10:00-10:59 AM		5.2%
11:00-11:59 AM		3.4%
12:00-3:59 PM		4.7%
4:00-11:59 PM		5.0%

Hilton Head Island South Carolina Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Hilton Head Island is 7:30-7:59 AM, when 16.1% of commuters leave home, compared with 12.6% across South Carolina. Early starts are less common than in South Carolina: 5.8% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 13.2% there. The morning rush is more concentrated than in South Carolina: 52.2% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 49.6% there. About 1 in 3 commuters (29.4%) 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 Hilton Head Island, 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 Hilton Head Island 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 Hilton Head Island next to South 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.

Median time commuters leave home, by ACS 5-year release year. Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Hilton Head Island	South Carolina	United States
2009	8:11 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2010	8:09 AM	7:37 AM	7:38 AM
2011	8:07 AM	7:37 AM	7:38 AM
2012	8:12 AM	7:37 AM	7:38 AM
2013	8:09 AM	7:38 AM	7:39 AM
2014	8:09 AM	7:37 AM	7:39 AM
2015	8:12 AM	7:37 AM	7:38 AM
2016	8:12 AM	7:36 AM	7:38 AM
2017	8:09 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM
2018	8:13 AM	7:34 AM	7:37 AM
2019	8:13 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2020	8:12 AM	7:32 AM	7:37 AM
2021	8:11 AM	7:33 AM	7:37 AM
2022	8:11 AM	7:34 AM	7:37 AM
2023	8:11 AM	7:34 AM	7:38 AM
2024	8:07 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Hilton Head Island were on the road by 8:07 AM, 3 minutes earlier than in 2009 (8:11 AM). South Carolina followed the same path, with the typical start moving 2 minutes earlier. Commuters in Hilton Head Island now leave 29 minutes later than the typical American commuter (7:38 AM). Since the 2019 release, which covers the years just before the pandemic, the typical start in Hilton Head Island has moved 5 minutes earlier.

How does Hilton Head Island's commute time compare?

Metric	Hilton Head Island	South Carolina	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	16.4 min	22.3 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	08:00 AM – 08:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	20.1%	11.5%	15.0%
Walked	1.7%	1.6%	2.4%
Public Transit	0.4%	0.4%	3.2%

The average commute time in Hilton Head Island is 16.4 minutes, shorter than the 22.3 minutes in South Carolina.

The share of commuters using public transit is about the same as South Carolina. 1.7% commute by walking, higher than the 1.6% in South Carolina.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Hilton Head Island, SC Commute Compared With Nearby Cities

How Hilton Head Island, SC compares with the 1 cities closest to it.

Area	Population	One-way commute	Work from home	Typical departure
Hilton Head Island, SC	35,733	16.4 min #1/2	20.1% #1/2	8:07 AM #2/2
Bluffton, SC	29,398	25.4 min	15.0%	7:46 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

How much does the average commute cost workers in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina?

Commuters here spend an estimated 137 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $4,232 at a typical national wage. That's 26% less than the typical South Carolina commuter spends.

When is rush hour worst in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina?

Traffic peaks between 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Leaving before or after this window is the single easiest way to avoid the heaviest local congestion, though 08:00 AM – 08:29 AM also sees a secondary bump.

Is Hilton Head Island, South Carolina a good location for remote and hybrid workers?

About 20.1% of workers here already work from home. Working from home just 2 days a week in Hilton Head Island would save about 55 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,693 at the same national wage assumption used above.