With our free press under threat and federal funding for public media gone, your support matters more than ever. Help keep the LAist newsroom strong, become a monthly member or increase your support today.
This is an archival story that predates current editorial management.
This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.
Cool Interactive Map: How Long It Takes Us To Get To Work
It turns out most people in Los Angeles don't really spend a third of their life in traffic, according to a new, interactive map that shows the average time it takes to get to work, divvied up by ZIP code. The average commute time across the country is 25.4 minutes, and it will surprise no one to learn that Angelenos spend a little more time en route to work than that. However, it's really not that much more. These numbers come from the U.S. Census Bureau and are presented in a cool map by WNYC. Now, the numbers don't take into account whether this time is spent driving from point A to point B, or sitting in traffic and inching along the three miles you live from work. It also doesn't specify how people are getting to work, although other surveys of census data suggest that L.A. is still very much a car city, with a growing number of (mostly male) bikers.
Here are some ZIP codes we pulled:
90020, Koreatown: 29.9 minutes.
90210, Beverly Hills: 25.9 minutes.
90062, South L.A.: 35 minutes.
90401, Santa Monica: 27.4
90028, Hollywoood: 29.1
91311, Chatsworth: 29.6 minutes.
93510, Acton: 46.3
90015, DTLA: 30 minutes.
You can compare these SoCal times to other ZIP codes across the U.S. Like Winnett, Montana, where the average commute time is a slim 9.6 minutes, or Normantown, West Virginia where the average commute is apparently 109 minutes.