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Custer County Commute Time Map & Patterns

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

You 9/24/26, 8:14 PM
How much time do drivers in Custer County spend on the road daily?
Map AI 9/24/26, 8:14 PM

Commute Time Burden in Custer County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Custer County spend about 51 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 212 hours, about 8.8 full days, spent commuting. That is 66% more time on the road than the South Dakota average of 15.3 minutes each way, a difference of 10.1 minutes.

Custer County holds about 1.0% of South Dakota's population but accounts for roughly 1.6% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Custer County would save about 85 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $2,633 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)
Custer County 25.5 min 51.0 min 212 hrs/yr $6,583 363
South Dakota 15.3 min 30.7 min 128 hrs/yr $3,961 353
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: South Dakota Counties

Fastest commutes among counties in South Dakota
  1. Jones County (6.7 min)
  2. Bennett County (7.5 min)
  3. Jackson County (7.8 min)
Slowest commutes among counties in South Dakota
  1. Custer County (25.5 min)
  2. McCook County (25.4 min)
  3. Turner County (23.1 min)

Compare commute times among different counties

Custer County
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Average commute time

On average, it takes 25.5 minutes to get to work in Custer County. That's 14% longer than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

Slowest county in South Dakota

The most common departure window is 06:30 AM – 06:59 AM, followed by 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 12.0% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Custer County

  • Car: 83.2%
  • Worked at Home: 12.0%
  • Walked: 2.8%
  • Other: 0.8%
  • Bicycle: 0.6%
  • Motorcycle: 0.6% unusually high
  • Public Transportation: < 0.1% unusually low
  • Taxi: < 0.1% unusually low

Riding a motorcycle is unusually common in Custer County: 3.6 times more than the South Dakota average (0.6% vs 0.2%).

Public transit is unusually rare in Custer County: 20.4 times less than the South Dakota average (0.0% vs 0.5%).

Taking a taxi is essentially absent in Custer County, versus 0.1% in South Dakota.

Commute Mode Trends in Custer County, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Custer 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 Motorcycle Bicycle Public Transportation Taxi
2009 86.1% 8.8% 3.1% 1.8% 0.0% 0.0% 0.2% 0.0%
2010 86.6% 8.2% 3.9% 0.6% 0.5% 0.0% 0.2% 0.0%
2011 84.3% 9.6% 4.1% 0.8% 0.1% 0.0% 1.2% 0.0%
2012 85.4% 6.1% 5.9% 1.4% 0.2% 0.0% 1.0% 0.0%
2013 83.0% 8.7% 5.7% 1.4% 0.2% 0.0% 0.9% 0.0%
2014 80.5% 10.3% 5.7% 1.8% 0.5% 0.4% 1.0% 0.0%
2015 83.0% 9.0% 5.4% 1.1% 0.3% 0.4% 0.8% 0.0%
2016 83.9% 6.7% 6.4% 1.5% 0.5% 0.3% 0.6% 0.0%
2017 81.5% 8.0% 7.8% 1.5% 0.3% 0.3% 0.7% 0.0%
2018 81.0% 6.5% 8.9% 2.2% 0.4% 0.4% 0.6% 0.0%
2019 84.3% 5.3% 8.4% 1.2% 0.0% 0.1% 0.7% 0.0%
2020 83.9% 5.7% 7.1% 1.0% 0.0% 1.2% 1.1% 0.0%
2021 82.0% 9.6% 5.5% 1.0% 0.0% 1.0% 0.9% 0.0%
2022 83.8% 11.9% 2.3% 0.8% 0.0% 1.0% 0.1% 0.0%
2023 84.9% 11.8% 2.0% 0.5% 0.0% 0.8% 0.0% 0.0%
2024 83.2% 12.0% 2.8% 0.8% 0.6% 0.6% 0.0% 0.0%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share was highest in 2010 at 86.6% and lowest in 2014 at 80.5%. Overall it fell from 86.1% in 2009 to 83.2% in 2024, down 2.9 percentage points. It has fallen in the latest release.

Working from home gained the most ground in Custer County: its share of workers rose from 8.8% in 2009 to 12.0% in 2024, up 3.2 percentage points. Most of that increase, 6.7 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Riding a motorcycle overtook public transit to become the 5th most common choice in the 2024 release and has stayed ahead since.

Walking peaked at 8.9% in 2018 and has since fallen back to 2.8%.

Commute Start Times in Custer County

  • Early BirdThe earliest start among South Dakota's 66 counties: half of commuters are on the road by 7:06 AM.

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Custer County?

The bars show when commuters in Custer 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 South Dakota for comparison. Hover over or tap a row for the exact numbers.

12:00-4:59 AM
6.9%
5:00-5:29 AM
4.3%
5:30-5:59 AM
6.5%
6:00-6:29 AM
8.3%
6:30-6:59 AM
20.3%
7:00-7:29 AM
18.8%
7:30-7:59 AM
10.3%
8:00-8:29 AM
5.4%
8:30-8:59 AM
2.7%
9:00-9:59 AM
2.3%
10:00-10:59 AM
1.7%
11:00-11:59 AM
1.8%
12:00-3:59 PM
2.9%
4:00-11:59 PM
7.6%

Custer County South Dakota Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Custer County is 6:30-6:59 AM, when 20.3% of commuters leave home, compared with 11.3% across South Dakota. Early starts are more common than in South Dakota: 17.7% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 12.2% there. The morning rush is more spread out than in South Dakota: 54.9% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 57.7% there. About 1 in 6 commuters (16.4%) 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 Custer 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 Custer 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 Custer County next to South Dakota 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 Custer County South Dakota United States
2009 7:25 AM 7:40 AM 7:37 AM
2010 7:26 AM 7:40 AM 7:38 AM
2011 7:26 AM 7:40 AM 7:38 AM
2012 7:22 AM 7:39 AM 7:38 AM
2013 7:22 AM 7:39 AM 7:39 AM
2014 7:24 AM 7:39 AM 7:39 AM
2015 7:13 AM 7:39 AM 7:38 AM
2016 7:17 AM 7:38 AM 7:38 AM
2017 7:18 AM 7:38 AM 7:38 AM
2018 7:16 AM 7:37 AM 7:37 AM
2019 7:14 AM 7:37 AM 7:37 AM
2020 7:19 AM 7:37 AM 7:37 AM
2021 7:21 AM 7:37 AM 7:37 AM
2022 7:20 AM 7:36 AM 7:37 AM
2023 7:14 AM 7:37 AM 7:38 AM
2024 7:06 AM 7:35 AM 7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Custer County were on the road by 7:06 AM, 19 minutes earlier than in 2009 (7:25 AM). The shift is sharper than across South Dakota, where the typical start moved 5 minutes earlier. Commuters in Custer County now leave 32 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 Custer County has moved 8 minutes earlier. The 2024 release is the earliest typical start for Custer County in the whole series.

How does Custer County's commute time compare?

Metric Custer County South Dakota US Average
Avg. Commute Time 25.5 min 15.3 min 22.4 min
Departure Window 06:30 AM – 06:59 AM 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM
Secondary Departure Window 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home 12.0% 9.7% 15.0%
Walked 2.8% 3.1% 2.4%
Public Transit < 0.1% 0.5% 3.2%

The average commute time in Custer County is 25.5 minutes, longer than the 15.3 minutes in South Dakota.

0.0% commute by public transit, lower than the 0.5% in South Dakota. 2.8% commute by walking, lower than the 3.1% in South Dakota.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Custer County, SD Commute Compared With Nearby Counties

Custer County, SD is the 4th largest of the 6 counties compared here, 8,892 residents against a local median of 13,491. Where Custer County, SD breaks from the counties next to it is one-way commute, sitting 123% above the local median of 11.4 min at 25.5 min. That is the weaker end of the local range on this measure.

Work from home tells the same story from another angle: 12.0% against a local median of 7.7%, 56% above it. The counties themselves sit within 8.1 min of each other on one-way commute, a tighter band than the gap between any of them and Custer County, SD, which makes it a genuine outlier here rather than one end of a wide local spread. Custer County, SD has the 6th lowest one-way commute of the 6 areas compared here.

Area Population One-way commute Work from home Typical departure
Custer County, SD 8,892 25.5 min #6/6 12.0% #1/6 7:06 AM #1/6
Fall River County, SD 7,258 10.3 min 9.7% 7:30 AM
Pennington County, SD 113,512 16.7 min 9.6% 7:25 AM
Lawrence County, SD 27,233 13.2 min 6.5% 7:49 AM
Oglala Lakota County, SD 13,491 11.4 min 3.8% 7:42 AM
Dawes County, NE 8,140 8.6 min 7.7% 7:48 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Custer County, South Dakota.

How much does the average commute cost workers in Custer County, South Dakota?

Commuters here spend an estimated 212 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $6,583 at a typical national wage. That's 66% more than the typical South Dakota commuter spends.

When is rush hour worst in Custer County, South Dakota?

Traffic peaks between 06:30 AM – 06:59 AM in Custer County, South Dakota. 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.

How common is public transit use in Custer County, South Dakota?

Public transit usage is significantly lower here than typical: about 0.0% of commuters use it versus 0.5% in South Dakota, meaning a personal vehicle is essential for most workers.

Which counties in South Dakota have the fastest and slowest commutes?

Among counties in South Dakota, the shortest average commutes are in Jones County (6.7 min), Bennett County (7.5 min), Jackson County (7.8 min). The longest are in Custer County (25.5 min), McCook County (25.4 min), Turner County (23.1 min).