Madison County Commute Time Map & Patterns

Commute Time Burden in Madison County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Madison County spend about 35 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 144 hours, about 6.0 full days, spent commuting. That is 23% less time on the road than the Tennessee average of 22.4 minutes each way, a difference of 5.1 minutes.

Madison County holds about 1.4% of Tennessee's population but accounts for roughly 1.1% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Madison County would save about 58 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,787 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)
Madison County	17.3 min	34.6 min	144 hrs/yr	$4,466	807
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.

Commute Time Map: Tennessee Counties

Compare commute times among different counties

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On average, it takes 17.3 minutes to get to work in Madison County. That's 23% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

Among the top 5 fastest counties in Tennessee

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 8.5% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Madison County

• Car: 85.8%
• Worked at Home: 8.5%
• Other: 3.0%
• Walked: 2.1%
• Public Transportation: 0.7%
• Bicycle: < 0.1% unusually low
• Motorcycle: < 0.1% unusually low
• Taxi: < 0.1% unusually low

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

Taking a taxi is essentially absent in Madison County, versus 0.1% in Tennessee.

Biking is unusually rare in Madison County: 6.1 times less than the Tennessee average (0.0% vs 0.1%).

Commute Mode Trends in Madison County, 2009-2024

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

Show commute mode data by year

Year	Car	Worked at Home	Other	Walked	Public Transportation	Taxi	Motorcycle	Bicycle
2009	94.9%	2.0%	0.5%	1.5%	0.9%	0.0%	0.1%	0.1%
2010	94.5%	2.5%	0.7%	1.3%	0.9%	0.0%	0.1%	0.1%
2011	93.0%	3.5%	0.9%	1.4%	1.0%	0.0%	0.1%	0.1%
2012	92.8%	3.9%	1.2%	1.1%	0.9%	0.0%	0.1%	0.1%
2013	91.7%	4.8%	1.3%	1.0%	0.8%	0.0%	0.2%	0.1%
2014	91.4%	4.6%	1.6%	1.0%	1.0%	0.0%	0.1%	0.2%
2015	91.9%	3.9%	2.2%	0.9%	0.8%	0.0%	0.1%	0.1%
2016	92.2%	3.3%	2.7%	0.9%	0.7%	0.0%	0.1%	0.1%
2017	92.4%	2.9%	2.7%	0.8%	0.9%	0.0%	0.1%	0.1%
2018	92.8%	2.4%	3.0%	1.0%	0.7%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%
2019	91.9%	3.1%	3.3%	1.1%	0.6%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%
2020	90.2%	4.5%	3.3%	1.5%	0.5%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%
2021	88.4%	5.6%	3.6%	1.6%	0.7%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%
2022	86.7%	6.7%	4.1%	1.9%	0.5%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%
2023	85.5%	8.1%	4.0%	1.8%	0.6%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
2024	85.8%	8.5%	3.0%	2.1%	0.7%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share bottomed out in 2023 at 85.5%. Overall it fell from 94.9% in 2009 to 85.8% in 2024, down 9.1 percentage points.

Working from home gained the most ground in Madison County: its share of workers rose from 2.0% in 2009 to 8.5% in 2024, up 6.5 percentage points. Most of that increase, 5.4 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Commute Start Times in Madison County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Madison County?

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

12:00-4:59 AM	12:00-4:59 AM Madison County5.2% Tennessee5.8%	5.2%
5:00-5:29 AM	5:00-5:29 AM Madison County3.4% Tennessee4.4%	3.4%
5:30-5:59 AM	5:30-5:59 AM Madison County4.2% Tennessee5.5%	4.2%
6:00-6:29 AM	6:00-6:29 AM Madison County8.7% Tennessee9.9%	8.7%
6:30-6:59 AM	6:30-6:59 AM Madison County11.6% Tennessee10.1%	11.6%
7:00-7:29 AM	7:00-7:29 AM Madison County13.1% Tennessee14.7%	13.1%
7:30-7:59 AM	7:30-7:59 AM Madison County15.1% Tennessee11.5%	15.1%
8:00-8:29 AM	8:00-8:29 AM Madison County10.8% Tennessee10.1%	10.8%
8:30-8:59 AM	8:30-8:59 AM Madison County4.4% Tennessee4.5%	4.4%
9:00-9:59 AM	9:00-9:59 AM Madison County4.1% Tennessee5.7%	4.1%
10:00-10:59 AM	10:00-10:59 AM Madison County2.3% Tennessee2.5%	2.3%
11:00-11:59 AM	11:00-11:59 AM Madison County1.2% Tennessee1.2%	1.2%
12:00-3:59 PM	12:00-3:59 PM Madison County7.0% Tennessee6.8%	7.0%
4:00-11:59 PM	4:00-11:59 PM Madison County9.0% Tennessee7.4%	9.0%

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

The busiest time to head out in Madison County is 7:30-7:59 AM, when 15.1% of commuters leave home, compared with 11.5% across Tennessee. Early starts are less common than in Tennessee: 12.7% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 15.7% there. The morning rush is more concentrated than in Tennessee: 50.6% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 46.4% there. About 1 in 4 commuters (23.6%) 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 Madison 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 Madison 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 Madison County 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.

• Madison County
• Tennessee
• United States

Show typical departure times by year

Year	Madison County	Tennessee	United States
2009	7:38 AM	7:30 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:38 AM	7:30 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:38 AM	7:30 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:38 AM	7:30 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:39 AM	7:30 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:41 AM	7:30 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:41 AM	7:30 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:41 AM	7:30 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:40 AM	7:29 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:37 AM	7:29 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:35 AM	7:28 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:35 AM	7:29 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:35 AM	7:29 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:36 AM	7:29 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:37 AM	7:29 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:38 AM	7:29 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Madison County were on the road by 7:38 AM, almost exactly the same as in 2009. Across Tennessee, the typical start barely moved either. Commuters in Madison County now leave at about the same time as the typical American commuter (7:38 AM). Since the 2019 release, which covers the years just before the pandemic, the typical start in Madison County has moved 3 minutes later.

How does Madison County's commute time compare?

Metric	Madison County	Tennessee	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	17.3 min	22.4 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	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	8.5%	12.9%	15.0%
Walked	2.1%	1.2%	2.4%
Public Transit	0.7%	0.4%	3.2%

The average commute time in Madison County is 17.3 minutes, shorter than the 22.4 minutes in Tennessee.

0.7% commute by public transit, higher than the 0.4% in Tennessee. 2.1% commute by walking, higher than the 1.2% in Tennessee.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau