Liberal, Kansas averages a 13.9-minute commute. Naperville, Illinois averages 29.4 minutes. San Francisco averages 33.4 minutes. Run those through the WhereAtHome formula and you get commute scores of 91.1, 44.6, and 32.6 — the same calculation, the same national yardstick, three very different weeks.
That spread is the whole story. A commute score tells you how a city's average trip compares to the rest of the country. It says nothing about which mode you'd use, how reliable the trip actually is, what it costs, or whether the time you save by living close to work gets eaten by a mortgage payment that's close to work, too. Here's how the number is built, what real cities show once you line them up, and how to test your own route before you commit to one.
What "27.6 minutes" actually measures
Every city commute score on WhereAtHome is measured against a single national benchmark: 27.6 minutes, drawn from Census Bureau data. The American Community Survey defines that figure as the typical one-way trip from home to work on an ordinary workday — it includes time spent waiting for a bus or picking up a carpool passenger, but it excludes the school run, the grocery stop, and the trip home. It's also not doubled for a round trip, so a city's 25-minute average is 50 minutes of daily travel, not 25.
Respondents also report only their primary mode for the longest leg of the trip, so someone who walks to a train and then takes a shuttle shows up as "transit" with no record of the walk or the transfer. The Census Bureau's commuting overview is a useful area-level signal precisely because of how narrowly it's scoped — treat it as a benchmark for a place, not a promise about your specific trip. Our ACS glossary entry has more on how these estimates are built and where their uncertainty comes from.
Same formula, five very different outcomes
WhereAtHome scores commute with one formula: 50 + (national average − city average) × 3, clamped between 0 and 100, and it counts for 15% of the overall score when a city has real commute data on file. Every minute a city beats the 27.6-minute national average is worth three points; every minute it falls behind costs three.
| City | Average commute | Commute score | What's driving it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal, KS | 13.9 min | 91.1 | Small, compact, almost no cross-town traffic |
| Fargo, ND | 16.8 min | 82.4 | Mid-size grid, short trip lengths |
| Denver, CO | 26.4 min | 53.6 | Close to the national average despite metro sprawl |
| Naperville, IL | 29.4 min | 44.6 | Chicago-suburb commutes, rail and highway both in the mix |
| San Francisco, CA | 33.4 min | 32.6 | Bay Area distances and congestion pull the average up |
That range — 91.1 down to 32.6 — comes entirely from one input. For a sense of the middle, Austin, TX averages 26.8 minutes, almost exactly the national figure, for a commute score of 51.8. It's a fast way to screen candidate cities, but a screen is all it is. Two cities with similar scores can still require completely different daily routines depending on mode availability, road design, and where in the city you'd actually live.
A short commute doesn't guarantee a cheap or easy life
Fargo and Denver make the tradeoff visible. Fargo's 16.8-minute average produces a strong 82.4 commute score, and its cost-of-living index sits around 94 — a few points under the national baseline of 100. Denver's commute is close to average (53.6) and its cost-of-living index runs about 128, roughly 28% above baseline. A resident who moves from Fargo to Denver for the outdoor lifestyle can end up with a longer daily commute and a meaningfully more expensive one at the same time.
Commute score and cost of living aren't the same input and don't move together automatically. WhereAtHome's purchasing power component — median income relative to the national figure, adjusted for cost of living when it's available — is a separate 10% of the score. Naperville shows the other side of the tradeoff: its 29.4-minute average is longer than Denver's, but high local incomes mean the household budget absorbs the commute and the housing cost differently than a lower-income city would. None of that shows up in a commute number alone, which is exactly why it's worth pulling apart before comparing two cities on "commute" as if it were one thing.
Beyond minutes: mode, reliability, and the trip you'll actually take
A published average compresses a lot of different trips into one figure. Two routes can both average 30 minutes while one is a steady 30 every day and the other swings between 18 and 55 depending on traffic — those are not the same commute, even though the statistic is identical.
Each mode carries its own hidden variables:
- Driving — the walk to the car, parking search at both ends, and how a single crash or closure changes the trip. Car-dependent cities like Liberal or Fargo tend to have short, predictable drive times with little transit backup if a car is ever unavailable.
- Transit — first-mile and last-mile walks, wait time, and transfer risk. Naperville's average blends commuters who take the Metra rail line into Chicago with others driving locally within DuPage County; San Francisco's blends BART, Muni, and driving. The same city average can hide two very different commutes.
- Walking or biking — worth checking against the walkability guide for route quality, not just distance.
- Carpool or rideshare — flexible until a schedule changes for someone else in the car, or a displayed rideshare fare and arrival time turn out to be optimistic.
There's no universally "best" mode — a longer transit ride with a seat and no attention required can beat a shorter drive that demands full focus the whole way. Record the qualities that matter to you rather than reducing every option to one number.
Remote and hybrid schedules change the real math
A one-way average is only useful once you multiply it by how many days you're actually on-site. Three days a week in the office is roughly 60% of the weekly driving or transit cost of five — but only if parking or a transit pass is priced daily rather than monthly, and only if "three days" doesn't quietly become four the first time a project runs late. Get the anchor-day policy in writing before you use it to justify living farther out.
Remote work isn't automatically free, either. It can remove the commute but add home office costs, higher utility bills, or a need for more space. Run your actual expected schedule, not the most optimistic one you've heard about informally.
Put the commute next to the housing number
The most common tradeoff in a relocation search is commute time for housing cost — moving farther out to pay less, or paying more to cut the trip. Make that trade explicit instead of comparing minutes and dollars in your head.
Weekly commute hours = one-way minutes × 2 × on-site days ÷ 60 Weekly housing difference = monthly housing difference × 12 ÷ 52
Naperville's median home value runs well above the national figure, but its income-to-housing ratio and school quality are part of why families accept the longer Chicago-adjacent commute. San Francisco stacks a below-average commute score on top of the country's highest housing costs — a combination the cost-of-living guide breaks down in more detail. Compare any two candidate cities side by side on the comparison tool, then run the math on the specific commute and specific home you're actually considering.
Test your actual commute before you sign anything
A city average is a starting point, not a verdict. Before you commit to an address, test the real trip:
- Map the exact route from the actual home to the actual workplace entrance in Google Maps or your transit agency's trip planner — not neighborhood-to-neighborhood, but door to door.
- Test departure at your real start time, including a normal Monday and a bad-weather day, not just whatever time the app defaults to.
- Check the return trip separately. Evening traffic and evening transit frequency are often worse than the morning.
- Pull the actual transit schedule, not just the routing estimate — check weekend and off-peak frequency if your schedule ever shifts.
- Price the full trip: fuel or fare, parking, tolls, and any pass, multiplied by your expected on-site days per week.
- Have a backup plan for a missed train, a closed road, or a canceled rideshare, and confirm it actually works at the hours you'd need it.
A commute score can tell you where to start looking. Only a tested route can tell you whether the move actually works.
