Meade County Commute Time Map & Patterns

Commute Time Burden in Meade County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Meade 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 155 hours, about 6.5 full days, spent commuting. That is 22% more time on the road than the South Dakota average of 15.3 minutes each way, a difference of 3.3 minutes.

Meade County holds about 3.4% of South Dakota's population but accounts for roughly 4.1% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Meade County would save about 62 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,928 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)
Meade County	18.7 min	37.3 min	155 hrs/yr	$4,820	691
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

Compare commute times among different counties

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On average, it takes 18.7 minutes to get to work in Meade County. That's 17% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

Slower than 89% of counties in South Dakota

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 8.1% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Meade County

• Car: 84.1%
• Worked at Home: 8.1%
• Walked: 5.2%
• Public Transportation: 1.0%
• Other: 0.9%
• Motorcycle: 0.6% unusually high
• Bicycle: 0.2%
• Taxi: < 0.1% unusually low

Riding a motorcycle is unusually common in Meade County: 3.5 times more than the South Dakota average (0.6% vs 0.2%).

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

Commute Mode Trends in Meade County, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Meade 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
• Public Transportation
• Other
• Motorcycle
• Bicycle
• Taxi

Show commute mode data by year

Year	Car	Worked at Home	Walked	Public Transportation	Other	Motorcycle	Bicycle	Taxi
2009	88.8%	6.3%	2.3%	0.2%	1.7%	0.4%	0.1%	0.1%
2010	88.1%	5.9%	2.4%	0.3%	2.2%	0.7%	0.3%	0.1%
2011	88.2%	5.6%	3.5%	0.4%	1.3%	0.7%	0.3%	0.1%
2012	88.1%	5.4%	4.3%	0.2%	1.1%	0.5%	0.2%	0.1%
2013	88.7%	5.4%	3.8%	0.4%	0.7%	0.7%	0.3%	0.0%
2014	89.3%	6.2%	3.1%	0.4%	0.3%	0.4%	0.3%	0.0%
2015	89.5%	6.4%	3.1%	0.4%	0.0%	0.4%	0.2%	0.0%
2016	89.7%	7.1%	2.3%	0.2%	0.0%	0.4%	0.2%	0.0%
2017	89.6%	7.7%	1.8%	0.2%	0.1%	0.3%	0.2%	0.0%
2018	89.0%	8.1%	1.8%	0.1%	0.2%	0.6%	0.2%	0.0%
2019	89.4%	7.5%	1.6%	0.0%	0.7%	0.5%	0.2%	0.0%
2020	86.2%	8.0%	4.2%	0.0%	1.0%	0.5%	0.1%	0.0%
2021	85.2%	8.6%	4.6%	0.0%	1.0%	0.6%	0.0%	0.0%
2022	85.8%	6.9%	4.8%	0.4%	1.3%	0.9%	0.0%	0.0%
2023	86.1%	7.1%	4.4%	0.7%	1.1%	0.7%	0.0%	0.0%
2024	84.1%	8.1%	5.2%	1.0%	0.9%	0.6%	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 2016 at 89.7%. Overall it fell from 88.8% in 2009 to 84.1% in 2024, down 4.7 percentage points. It has fallen in the latest release.

Walking gained the most ground in Meade County: its share of workers rose from 2.3% in 2009 to 5.2% in 2024, up 2.9 percentage points. Most of that increase, 3.6 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Commute Start Times in Meade County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Meade County?

The bars show when commuters in Meade 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	12:00-4:59 AM Meade County4.2% South Dakota4.1%	4.2%
5:00-5:29 AM	5:00-5:29 AM Meade County5.9% South Dakota3.1%	5.9%
5:30-5:59 AM	5:30-5:59 AM Meade County6.5% South Dakota5.1%	6.5%
6:00-6:29 AM	6:00-6:29 AM Meade County11.5% South Dakota6.9%	11.5%
6:30-6:59 AM	6:30-6:59 AM Meade County14.0% South Dakota11.3%	14.0%
7:00-7:29 AM	7:00-7:29 AM Meade County15.3% South Dakota16.2%	15.3%
7:30-7:59 AM	7:30-7:59 AM Meade County16.3% South Dakota19.9%	16.3%
8:00-8:29 AM	8:00-8:29 AM Meade County6.9% South Dakota10.2%	6.9%
8:30-8:59 AM	8:30-8:59 AM Meade County2.7% South Dakota3.7%	2.7%
9:00-9:59 AM	9:00-9:59 AM Meade County3.0% South Dakota4.3%	3.0%
10:00-10:59 AM	10:00-10:59 AM Meade County1.5% South Dakota2.0%	1.5%
11:00-11:59 AM	11:00-11:59 AM Meade County0.5% South Dakota1.4%	0.5%
12:00-3:59 PM	12:00-3:59 PM Meade County6.4% South Dakota6.1%	6.4%
4:00-11:59 PM	4:00-11:59 PM Meade County5.4% South Dakota5.8%	5.4%

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

The busiest time to head out in Meade County is 7:30-7:59 AM, when 16.3% of commuters leave home, compared with 19.9% across South Dakota. Early starts are more common than in South Dakota: 16.6% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 12.2% there. The morning rush is more spread out than in South Dakota: 52.5% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 57.7% there. About 1 in 6 commuters (16.8%) 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 Meade 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 Meade 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 Meade 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.

• Meade County
• South Dakota
• United States

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Meade County	South Dakota	United States
2009	7:23 AM	7:40 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:27 AM	7:40 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:26 AM	7:40 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:23 AM	7:39 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:25 AM	7:39 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:21 AM	7:39 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:19 AM	7:39 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:20 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:17 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:15 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:20 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:21 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:17 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:18 AM	7:36 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:20 AM	7:37 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:15 AM	7:35 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Meade County were on the road by 7:15 AM, 8 minutes earlier than in 2009 (7:23 AM). The shift is sharper than across South Dakota, where the typical start moved 5 minutes earlier. Commuters in Meade County now leave 22 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 Meade County has moved 4 minutes earlier.

How does Meade County's commute time compare?

Metric	Meade County	South Dakota	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	18.7 min	15.3 min	22.4 min
Departure Window	07:30 AM – 07:59 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	8.1%	9.7%	15.0%
Walked	5.2%	3.1%	2.4%
Public Transit	1.0%	0.5%	3.2%

The average commute time in Meade County is 18.7 minutes, longer than the 15.3 minutes in South Dakota.

1.0% commute by public transit, higher than the 0.5% in South Dakota. 5.2% commute by walking, higher than the 3.1% in South Dakota.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau