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Rankings · Shortest Commutes by State straight from the tape

Shortest Commutes by State, South Dakota Leads (2026)

Mean one-way travel time to work from the American Community Survey, shortest first, city and state.

By The Honest Local · 49 states · every value links to its public source
17.8 minSouth Dakota leads with the lowest one-way commute of all 50 states
South Dakota
South Dakota, No. 1 lowest of 49.
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Mean one-way travel time to work from the American Community Survey, shortest first, city and state.

Shortest Commutes by State, all 49

The full ranking one-way commute
Placeone-way commute
1South Dakota17.8 min
2North Dakota17.9 min
3Wyoming18.8 min
4Montana19.1 min
5Nebraska19.2 min
6Alaska19.4 min
7Kansas19.7 min
8Iowa19.8 min
9Idaho21.6 min
10Utah22.1 min
11Wisconsin22.2 min
12Oklahoma22.4 min
13Arkansas22.5 min
14Minnesota22.7 min
15Ohio23.4 min
16Vermont23.5 min
17Missouri23.5 min
18New Mexico23.5 min
19Kentucky24 min
20Indiana24.1 min
21Michigan24.2 min
22Maine24.6 min
23Nevada24.8 min
24North Carolina25.1 min
25Colorado25.2 min
26Arizona25.4 min
27Alabama25.5 min
28Rhode Island25.5 min
29South Carolina25.6 min
30Mississippi25.6 min
31Louisiana25.7 min
32Tennessee25.7 min
33Delaware26 min
34Hawaii26.2 min
35Pennsylvania26.3 min
36Connecticut26.5 min
37Washington26.6 min
38West Virginia26.6 min
39New Hampshire26.7 min
40Texas26.7 min
41Virginia27.3 min
42Illinois27.8 min
43Florida28 min
44Georgia28.3 min
45California28.7 min
46Massachusetts29.1 min
47New Jersey30.5 min
48Maryland31.1 min
49New York32.6 min
Sources and method
  1. American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, tables B08013 and B08303 (via tape_readings) · 2020-2024

How we got this. Commute time comes from tape_readings, which src/tape/acs-more.ts reads from the Census Bureau's ACS 5-year table-based Summary File: aggregate travel time to work (table B08013) divided by the workers who did not work from home (B08303), the mean one-way commute in minutes. Cities and states each rank on their own list, shortest first. Places tied at the same tenth of a minute share a rank. The US Virgin Islands has no ACS coverage. It refreshes annual.

Rankings by The Honest Local from public data, one page per list, refreshed on each source’s own cycle. Places with no reading are left out rather than estimated. Every value on this page carries its source in the page’s structured data.

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