How Much Commuting Actually Costs in 90 Cities

Illustration for article titled How Much Commuting Actually Costs in 90 Cities

TheStreet and financial data site Bundle ranked 90 metropolitan areas by their commuters' monthly time and spending on commutes. See how your city fared, along with the potential savings if you figure out another way to work.


This map, along with a related bar-style chart, drew in part from the latest Census data release that included figures on how many people drive alone, carpool, and otherwise get to work. When taking into account both fuel and long-term maintenance inevitabilities, you arrive at a figure that isn't usually factored into the "affordability" analysis and rankings you'll see around this time.

How does your city fare? What do you do to curtail the cost of commuting?

America's best and worst commutes [Bundle]



Having the unfortunate luck of driving through rush hour in five of the cities listed, I would have ranked them from best to worst:

Portland, OR

(Just getting out of downtown on surface roads is ridiculously painful for 20 minutes.)

San Francisco, CA

(Those damned tolls and the slowed traffic to get through them, make for a long wait.)

Los Angeles, CA

(I once spent 60 minutes trying to get from downtown to Hollywood 6 miles away, and that was at nearly 7:00 pm.)

Seattle, WA

(A gazillion lanes south of Seattle, but you're still at a full stop with some go 20 feet at a time. I spent over an hour between Seattle and Tacoma.)

Honolulu, HI

(Impossible to bypass the highways trying to get from point A to point B, because there are limited options. 2+ hours going 22 miles from downtown to Kapolei is not unheard of.)