Arizona’s Traffic Might Not Be So Bad

Phoenix has one of the shortest commutes of a major U.S. city.

Geotab looked at the average commute times for the 20 largest metropolitan areas. They used Census Transportation Planning Products survey data for 2012 through 2016, and found that Phoenix was tied with San Diego at 26 minutes.

The company also released maps to help visualize the range of commute times across each area.


“These maps provide us with an alternative way of thinking about cities,” said Maria Sotra, the Geotab vice president of marketing.

“A city doesn’t necessarily stop at the official city boundaries — instead, they continue to sprawl much further thanks to the commuters that travel in and out of these areas for work throughout the week.”

Phoenix was tied for second with Minneapolis at 27 minutes when looking at the commute time by car. Geotab also rated cities based in terms of being reachable. It was based upon the percentage of commuters who could reach the city in 30 minutes.

Phoenix cans in second with 69%. San Diego was first with 72%. New York, 43 minutes, and Washington, 41 minutes, had the longest commute times. New York is also the least reachable city at 4%.