Harrisonburg Commute Time Map & Patterns

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

You 9/24/26, 4:26 PM

How much time do drivers in Harrisonburg spend on the road daily?

Map AI 9/24/26, 4:26 PM

Commute Time Burden in Harrisonburg: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Harrisonburg spend about 28 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 115 hours, about 4.8 full days, spent commuting. That is 40% less time on the road than the Virginia average of 23.2 minutes each way, a difference of 9.3 minutes.

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

Working from home just 2 days a week in Harrisonburg would save about 46 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,430 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)
Harrisonburg	13.8 min	27.7 min	115 hrs/yr	$3,576	2,453
Virginia	23.2 min	46.3 min	193 hrs/yr	$5,986	1,531
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.

Harrisonburg Commute Map

On average, it takes 13.8 minutes to get to work in Harrisonburg. That's 38% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 04:00 PM – 11:59 PM, followed by 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM. Driving is the most common commute choice, followed by working from home. About 9.1% work from home.

How People Get to Work in Harrisonburg

Biking is unusually common in Harrisonburg: 4.7 times more than the Virginia average (1.3% vs 0.3%).

Commute Mode Trends in Harrisonburg, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Harrisonburg 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	Public Transportation	Bicycle	Other	Taxi	Motorcycle
2009	84.5%	3.1%	7.8%	0.8%	2.0%	1.1%	0.5%	0.3%
2010	85.4%	3.4%	7.1%	1.2%	1.7%	0.7%	0.4%	0.2%
2011	84.3%	3.7%	7.8%	1.6%	1.8%	0.4%	0.3%	0.1%
2012	85.2%	3.1%	7.1%	2.3%	1.7%	0.3%	0.1%	0.2%
2013	84.3%	2.8%	8.1%	2.7%	1.6%	0.3%	0.2%	0.1%
2014	83.6%	2.8%	8.5%	2.9%	1.6%	0.4%	0.2%	0.1%
2015	82.6%	3.5%	8.4%	2.9%	1.8%	0.4%	0.4%	0.0%
2016	83.6%	3.1%	8.0%	2.8%	1.7%	0.4%	0.4%	0.1%
2017	83.0%	3.1%	8.4%	2.2%	1.7%	0.8%	0.6%	0.1%
2018	83.7%	3.4%	7.5%	2.4%	1.5%	0.9%	0.4%	0.2%
2019	82.5%	4.3%	7.9%	2.0%	1.8%	0.9%	0.4%	0.2%
2020	84.0%	5.1%	6.1%	1.6%	1.9%	0.7%	0.3%	0.2%
2021	83.5%	6.1%	6.1%	1.1%	2.0%	0.8%	0.2%	0.2%
2022	82.2%	7.6%	6.0%	1.5%	2.1%	0.5%	0.1%	0.1%
2023	81.8%	8.6%	5.7%	1.3%	1.9%	0.6%	0.0%	0.0%
2024	81.5%	9.1%	5.2%	1.8%	1.3%	0.9%	0.2%	0.1%

Driving was the most common way to get to work in every release from 2009 to 2024. Its share peaked in 2010 at 85.4%. Overall it fell from 84.5% in 2009 to 81.5% in 2024, down 3.0 percentage points. It has fallen in each of the last 4 releases.

Working from home gained the most ground in Harrisonburg: its share of workers rose from 3.1% in 2009 to 9.1% in 2024, up 6.0 percentage points. Most of that increase, 4.8 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Walking lost the most ground, falling from 7.8% to 5.2% of workers (down 2.6 percentage points).

Working from home overtook walking to become the 2nd most common choice in the 2022 release and has stayed ahead since.

Public transit peaked at 2.9% in 2014 and has since fallen back to 1.8%.

Commute Start Times in Harrisonburg

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Harrisonburg?

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

12:00-4:59 AM		4.2%
5:00-5:29 AM		3.8%
5:30-5:59 AM		3.9%
6:00-6:29 AM		6.1%
6:30-6:59 AM		5.3%
7:00-7:29 AM		13.5%
7:30-7:59 AM		10.7%
8:00-8:29 AM		10.1%
8:30-8:59 AM		5.0%
9:00-9:59 AM		7.5%
10:00-10:59 AM		4.4%
11:00-11:59 AM		2.6%
12:00-3:59 PM		9.1%
4:00-11:59 PM		13.8%

Harrisonburg Virginia Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Harrisonburg is 4:00-11:59 PM, when 13.8% of commuters leave home, compared with 5.7% across Virginia. Early starts are less common than in Virginia: 11.9% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 14.0% there. The morning rush is more spread out than in Virginia: 39.6% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 47.5% there. About 1 in 3 commuters (37.4%) 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 Harrisonburg, 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 Harrisonburg 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 Harrisonburg next to Virginia 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	Harrisonburg	Virginia	United States
2009	8:02 AM	7:37 AM	7:37 AM
2010	8:08 AM	7:37 AM	7:38 AM
2011	8:13 AM	7:37 AM	7:38 AM
2012	8:10 AM	7:38 AM	7:38 AM
2013	8:15 AM	7:38 AM	7:39 AM
2014	8:16 AM	7:38 AM	7:39 AM
2015	8:14 AM	7:39 AM	7:38 AM
2016	8:15 AM	7:39 AM	7:38 AM
2017	8:16 AM	7:39 AM	7:38 AM
2018	8:14 AM	7:38 AM	7:37 AM
2019	8:07 AM	7:38 AM	7:37 AM
2020	8:10 AM	7:38 AM	7:37 AM
2021	8:07 AM	7:38 AM	7:37 AM
2022	8:04 AM	7:39 AM	7:37 AM
2023	8:07 AM	7:39 AM	7:38 AM
2024	8:07 AM	7:40 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Harrisonburg were on the road by 8:07 AM, 5 minutes later than in 2009 (8:02 AM). Virginia followed the same path, with the typical start moving 3 minutes later. Commuters in Harrisonburg now leave 30 minutes later than the typical American commuter (7:38 AM).

How does Harrisonburg's commute time compare?

Metric	Harrisonburg	Virginia	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	13.8 min	23.2 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	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	08:00 AM – 08:29 AM	07:30 AM – 07:59 AM
Work From Home	9.1%	18.3%	15.0%
Walked	5.2%	2.1%	2.4%
Public Transit	1.8%	2.3%	3.2%

The average commute time in Harrisonburg is 13.8 minutes, shorter than the 23.2 minutes in Virginia.

1.8% commute by public transit, lower than the 2.3% in Virginia. 5.2% commute by walking, higher than the 2.1% in Virginia.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

How much does the average commute cost workers in Harrisonburg, Virginia?

Commuters here spend an estimated 115 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $3,576 at a typical national wage. That's 40% less than the typical Virginia commuter spends.

When is rush hour worst in Harrisonburg, Virginia?

Traffic peaks between 04:00 PM – 11:59 PM in Harrisonburg, Virginia. 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.