Douglas County Commute Time Map & Patterns

Help

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

You 9/24/26, 8:25 PM

Is the commute in Douglas County longer than the national average?

Map AI 9/24/26, 8:25 PM

Commute Time Burden in Douglas County: Annual Hours and Cost

Commuters in Douglas County spend about 36 minutes on the road round trip each working day. Over a typical 250-day work year, that adds up to roughly 151 hours, about 6.3 full days, spent commuting. That is 4% less time on the road than the Wisconsin average of 18.8 minutes each way, a difference of 0.7 minutes.

Douglas County holds about 0.7% of Wisconsin's population and accounts for roughly 0.7% of its total commuting time.

Working from home just 2 days a week in Douglas County would save about 60 hours of drive time a year, worth roughly $1,868 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)
Douglas County	18.1 min	36.2 min	151 hrs/yr	$4,670	832
Wisconsin	18.8 min	37.5 min	156 hrs/yr	$4,846	811
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: Wisconsin Counties

Fastest commutes among counties in Wisconsin

Ashland County (12.8 min)
Door County (13.6 min)
Eau Claire County (15.3 min)

Slowest commutes among counties in Wisconsin

Oconto County (26.4 min)
St. Croix County (25.3 min)
Waushara County (23.9 min)

Compare commute times among different counties

Douglas County

Click a county to open it Explore the map →

Average commute time

On average, it takes 18.1 minutes to get to work in Douglas County. That's 19% shorter than the 22.4-minute U.S. average.

The most common departure window is 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM, followed by 07:30 AM – 07:59 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 Douglas County

Commute Mode Trends in Douglas County, 2009-2024

This chart shows how workers in Douglas 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	Public Transportation	Other	Bicycle	Taxi	Motorcycle
2009	90.6%	3.6%	3.4%	0.5%	1.0%	0.7%	0.0%	0.2%
2010	91.1%	3.9%	2.9%	0.5%	0.8%	0.6%	0.1%	0.2%
2011	90.6%	3.6%	3.4%	0.6%	1.1%	0.6%	0.1%	0.1%
2012	90.0%	3.9%	3.4%	0.9%	1.1%	0.6%	0.0%	0.1%
2013	89.7%	3.7%	3.2%	1.3%	1.5%	0.5%	0.0%	0.1%
2014	90.1%	3.5%	3.6%	1.3%	1.1%	0.2%	0.0%	0.1%
2015	89.1%	3.7%	3.8%	1.5%	1.6%	0.3%	0.0%	0.1%
2016	90.0%	3.7%	3.1%	1.4%	1.1%	0.5%	0.0%	0.1%
2017	89.4%	3.9%	3.5%	1.6%	1.1%	0.4%	0.0%	0.0%
2018	88.8%	4.5%	3.8%	1.3%	1.1%	0.3%	0.0%	0.1%
2019	88.8%	4.5%	3.8%	1.2%	1.3%	0.3%	0.0%	0.1%
2020	88.2%	5.5%	4.1%	1.2%	0.8%	0.1%	0.0%	0.1%
2021	87.2%	6.0%	4.8%	1.0%	0.8%	0.0%	0.0%	0.2%
2022	87.0%	6.9%	4.3%	0.8%	0.8%	0.0%	0.0%	0.2%
2023	87.0%	7.6%	3.9%	0.9%	0.5%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%
2024	85.5%	9.1%	3.4%	1.0%	0.6%	0.2%	0.1%	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 91.1%. Overall it fell from 90.6% in 2009 to 85.5% in 2024, down 5.1 percentage points. It has fallen in the latest release.

Working from home gained the most ground in Douglas County: its share of workers rose from 3.6% in 2009 to 9.1% in 2024, up 5.5 percentage points. Most of that increase, 4.6 points, came in the releases after 2019, which include the pandemic years.

Public transit overtook biking to become the 4th most common choice in the 2012 release and has stayed ahead since.

Walking peaked at 4.8% in 2021 and has since fallen back to 3.4%.

Commute Start Times in Douglas County

What Time Do People Leave for Work in Douglas County?

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

12:00-4:59 AM		6.6%
5:00-5:29 AM		3.0%
5:30-5:59 AM		5.0%
6:00-6:29 AM		11.1%
6:30-6:59 AM		11.0%
7:00-7:29 AM		14.0%
7:30-7:59 AM		13.6%
8:00-8:29 AM		9.3%
8:30-8:59 AM		4.7%
9:00-9:59 AM		4.2%
10:00-10:59 AM		2.0%
11:00-11:59 AM		1.7%
12:00-3:59 PM		8.1%
4:00-11:59 PM		5.6%

Douglas County Wisconsin Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates

The busiest time to head out in Douglas County is 7:00-7:29 AM, when 14.0% of commuters leave home, compared with 14.7% across Wisconsin. Early starts are less common than in Wisconsin: 14.5% of commuters leave before 6 AM, versus 17.7% there. The morning rush looks much like Wisconsin's: 47.9% of departures fall in the two hours from 6:30 to 8:29 AM, versus 46.8% there. About 1 in 5 commuters (21.7%) 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 Douglas 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 Douglas 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 Douglas County next to Wisconsin 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	Douglas County	Wisconsin	United States
2009	7:41 AM	7:30 AM	7:37 AM
2010	7:40 AM	7:30 AM	7:38 AM
2011	7:41 AM	7:30 AM	7:38 AM
2012	7:39 AM	7:31 AM	7:38 AM
2013	7:40 AM	7:31 AM	7:39 AM
2014	7:39 AM	7:30 AM	7:39 AM
2015	7:37 AM	7:30 AM	7:38 AM
2016	7:35 AM	7:29 AM	7:38 AM
2017	7:36 AM	7:29 AM	7:38 AM
2018	7:34 AM	7:28 AM	7:37 AM
2019	7:31 AM	7:27 AM	7:37 AM
2020	7:32 AM	7:27 AM	7:37 AM
2021	7:35 AM	7:27 AM	7:37 AM
2022	7:31 AM	7:27 AM	7:37 AM
2023	7:31 AM	7:27 AM	7:38 AM
2024	7:29 AM	7:27 AM	7:38 AM

In 2024, half of commuters in Douglas County were on the road by 7:29 AM, 12 minutes earlier than in 2009 (7:41 AM). The shift is sharper than across Wisconsin, where the typical start moved 3 minutes earlier. Commuters in Douglas County now leave 9 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 Douglas County has moved 2 minutes earlier. The 2024 release is the earliest typical start for Douglas County in the whole series.

How does Douglas County's commute time compare?

Metric	Douglas County	Wisconsin	US Average
Avg. Commute Time	18.1 min	18.8 min	22.4 min
Departure Window	07:00 AM – 07:29 AM	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	9.1%	13.1%	15.0%
Walked	3.4%	2.6%	2.4%
Public Transit	1.0%	1.1%	3.2%

The average commute time in Douglas County is 18.1 minutes, shorter than the 18.8 minutes in Wisconsin.

1.0% commute by public transit, lower than the 1.1% in Wisconsin. 3.4% commute by walking, higher than the 2.6% in Wisconsin.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Douglas County, WI Commute Compared With Nearby Counties

Douglas County, WI is the largest of the 6 counties compared here, 44,229 residents against a local median of 16,916. Douglas County, WI's work from home, at 9.1%, runs 23% below the 11.8% typical of the counties around it.

The counties themselves spread 4.0% on work from home, so Douglas County, WI sits at one end of an already wide local range rather than apart from it. Douglas County, WI has the 6th highest work from home of the 6 areas compared here.

Area	Population	One-way commute	Work from home	Typical departure
Douglas County, WI	44,229	18.1 min #1/6	9.1% #6/6	7:29 AM #5/6
Washburn County, WI	16,854	20.4 min	12.6%	7:26 AM
Bayfield County, WI	16,575	18.7 min	13.4%	7:37 AM
Burnett County, WI	16,916	20.2 min	11.8%	7:22 AM
Carlton County, MN	36,511	18.9 min	9.5%	7:19 AM
Pine County, MN	29,640	23.2 min	10.3%	7:16 AM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about commuting in Douglas County, Wisconsin.

Is living in Douglas County, Wisconsin good for avoiding long commute costs?

Commuters here spend an estimated 151 hours a year on the road, worth roughly $4,670 at a typical national wage. That's 4% less than the typical Wisconsin commuter spends.

When is peak congestion during the morning commute in Douglas County, Wisconsin?

Traffic peaks between 07:00 AM – 07:29 AM in Douglas County, Wisconsin. 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.

How do commute times compare across counties in Wisconsin?

Among counties in Wisconsin, the shortest average commutes are in Ashland County (12.8 min), Door County (13.6 min), Eau Claire County (15.3 min). The longest are in Oconto County (26.4 min), St. Croix County (25.3 min), Waushara County (23.9 min).