Pricing
Map Drive-Time Zone10-min drive time • PDF report

Cleveland Commute Time Map & Patterns

Help

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

You 9/24/26, 4:20 PM
How much time do drivers in Cleveland spend on the road daily?
Map AI 9/24/26, 4:20 PM

Commute Time Burden in Cleveland: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Cleveland spend about 33 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 139 hours, about 5.8 full days, spent commuting. That is 26% less time on the road than the Tennessee average of 22.4 minutes each way, a difference of 5.7 minutes.

Cleveland holds about 0.6% of Tennessee's population but accounts for roughly 0.4% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Cleveland would save about 55 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,720 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)
Cleveland 16.6 min 33.3 min 139 hrs/yr $4,301 2,625
Tennessee 22.4 min 44.8 min 187 hrs/yr $5,785 1,225
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.

Cleveland Commute Map

On average, it takes 16.6 minutes to get to work in Cleveland. That's 26% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 04:00 PM – 11:59 PM, followed by 07:30 AM – 07:59 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 Cleveland

  • Car: 88.7%
  • Worked at Home: 8.1%
  • Walked: 2.5%
  • Other: 0.3%
  • Bicycle: 0.2%
  • Taxi: 0.1%
  • Public Transportation: < 0.1% unusually low
  • Motorcycle: < 0.1% unusually low

Riding a motorcycle is essentially absent in Cleveland, versus 0.0% in Tennessee.

Public transit is unusually rare in Cleveland: 11.3 times less than the Tennessee average (0.0% vs 0.4%).

Commute Mode Trends in Cleveland, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Cleveland 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 Taxi Public Transportation Motorcycle
2009 91.6% 3.8% 2.9% 1.2% 0.1% 0.1% 0.1% 0.3%
2010 90.8% 3.7% 2.5% 2.2% 0.2% 0.1% 0.2% 0.4%
2011 91.8% 2.3% 2.9% 2.3% 0.2% 0.0% 0.2% 0.3%
2012 91.4% 2.5% 2.9% 2.4% 0.2% 0.0% 0.2% 0.4%
2013 91.6% 2.3% 3.6% 2.0% 0.2% 0.0% 0.2% 0.1%
2014 90.0% 2.6% 5.0% 1.9% 0.2% 0.0% 0.2% 0.1%
2015 89.0% 3.3% 5.4% 2.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.2% 0.1%
2016 89.1% 3.6% 4.7% 2.2% 0.1% 0.0% 0.2% 0.1%
2017 89.3% 3.5% 5.1% 1.6% 0.1% 0.0% 0.3% 0.0%
2018 89.5% 4.1% 4.3% 1.6% 0.3% 0.0% 0.3% 0.0%
2019 90.5% 3.5% 3.6% 1.5% 0.4% 0.3% 0.2% 0.0%
2020 91.2% 3.3% 3.6% 0.8% 0.5% 0.3% 0.3% 0.0%
2021 90.6% 4.5% 3.3% 0.6% 0.4% 0.4% 0.3% 0.0%
2022 91.5% 4.8% 2.4% 0.3% 0.5% 0.5% 0.0% 0.0%
2023 88.9% 7.1% 2.7% 0.3% 0.3% 0.7% 0.0% 0.0%
2024 88.7% 8.1% 2.5% 0.3% 0.2% 0.1% 0.0% 0.0%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share peaked in 2011 at 91.8%. Overall it fell from 91.6% in 2009 to 88.7% in 2024, down 2.9 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 2 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Cleveland: its share of workers rose from 3.8% in 2009 to 8.1% in 2024, up 4.3 percentage points. Most of that increase, 4.6 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Walking peaked at 5.4% in 2015 and has since fallen back to 2.5%.

Commute Start Times in Cleveland

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Cleveland?

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

12:00-4:59 AM
4.6%
5:00-5:29 AM
3.6%
5:30-5:59 AM
4.7%
6:00-6:29 AM
7.1%
6:30-6:59 AM
10.4%
7:00-7:29 AM
11.3%
7:30-7:59 AM
11.6%
8:00-8:29 AM
7.5%
8:30-8:59 AM
5.9%
9:00-9:59 AM
6.8%
10:00-10:59 AM
1.9%
11:00-11:59 AM
1.5%
12:00-3:59 PM
9.5%
4:00-11:59 PM
13.4%

Cleveland Tennessee Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Cleveland is 4:00-11:59 PM, when 13.4% of commuters leave home, compared with 7.4% across Tennessee. Early starts are less common than in Tennessee: 13.0% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 15.7% there. The morning rush is more spread out than in Tennessee: 40.9% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 46.4% there. About 1 in 3 commuters (33.2%) 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 Cleveland, 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 Cleveland 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 Cleveland next to Tennessee 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 Cleveland Tennessee United States
2009 7:50 AM 7:30 AM 7:37 AM
2010 7:49 AM 7:30 AM 7:38 AM
2011 7:48 AM 7:30 AM 7:38 AM
2012 7:49 AM 7:30 AM 7:38 AM
2013 7:48 AM 7:30 AM 7:39 AM
2014 7:49 AM 7:30 AM 7:39 AM
2015 7:52 AM 7:30 AM 7:38 AM
2016 7:54 AM 7:30 AM 7:38 AM
2017 7:51 AM 7:29 AM 7:38 AM
2018 7:53 AM 7:29 AM 7:37 AM
2019 7:54 AM 7:28 AM 7:37 AM
2020 7:53 AM 7:29 AM 7:37 AM
2021 7:51 AM 7:29 AM 7:37 AM
2022 7:54 AM 7:29 AM 7:37 AM
2023 7:50 AM 7:29 AM 7:38 AM
2024 7:51 AM 7:29 AM 7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Cleveland were on the road by 7:51 AM, 1 minute later than in 2009 (7:50 AM). Across Tennessee, the typical start barely moved over the same years. Commuters in Cleveland now leave 13 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 Cleveland has moved 3 minutes earlier.

How does Cleveland's commute time compare?

Metric Cleveland Tennessee US Average
Avg. Commute Time 16.6 min 22.4 min 22.4 min
Departure Window 04:00 PM – 11:59 PM 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM
Secondary Departure Window 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM 07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home 8.1% 12.9% 15.0%
Walked 2.5% 1.2% 2.4%
Public Transit < 0.1% 0.4% 3.2%

The average commute time in Cleveland is 16.6 minutes, shorter than the 22.4 minutes in Tennessee.

0.0% commute by public transit, lower than the 0.4% in Tennessee. 2.5% commute by walking, higher than the 1.2% in Tennessee.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Cleveland, Tennessee.

Is living in Cleveland, Tennessee good for avoiding long commute costs?

Commuters here spend an estimated 139 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $4,301 at a typical national wage. That's 26% less than the typical Tennessee commuter spends.

When is peak congestion during the morning commute in Cleveland, Tennessee?

Traffic peaks between 04:00 PM – 11:59 PM in Cleveland, Tennessee. 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.

Is public transportation a realistic commute option in Cleveland, Tennessee?

Public transit usage is significantly lower here than typical: about 0.0% of commuters use it versus 0.4% in Tennessee, meaning a personal vehicle is essential for most workers.