This Chart Shows How Long It Takes to Get from an Airport to the City

If you're on vacation, it's always a bit of a crapshoot as to how long it takes to get from the airport to the city. Over on FiveThirtyEight, they crunched the numbers to find the average time for taking a car or public transit to the airport.

As you'd expect, it varies wildly based on time of day and location. From Laguardia to downtown Manhattan by public transit takes around 65 minutes while a taxi typically takes around 50 minutes. In LA, you're way better off in a car, where you'll get downtown in about 85 minutes as opposed to a three hour twenty minute public transit ride. It's a rough guide and only one-way, but if you're trying to plan out that trip from the airport, it's a good place to start.


Planes, Trains and Taxis: When to Take Public Transit From the Airport | FiveThirtyEight

Illustration for article titled This Chart Shows How Long It Takes to Get from an Airport to the City


Let's pump the brakes on the LA transit taking 3hrs to get to the airport. The chart shows that it takes three hours to get to SNA, which is John Wayne Airport in Orange County. That's like saying Trenton is a New York area airport. If you fly into SNA, you're probably not going to DTLA. You're probably going to Irvine or Costa Mesa. It'd be more accurate to get a time to Downtown Disney than Downtown Los Angeles.

That being said, the 1:15 time from LAX to DTLA is accurate and a problem (though they're working on it).