The average commuter in the United States travels about 25 miles each way to work. But a lot of commutes are hell-on-wheels.
About 8.1 percent of U.S. workers have commutes of 60 minutes or longer, 4.3 percent work from home, and nearly 600,000 full-time workers had “megacommutes” of at least 90 minutes and 50 miles, says the U.S. Census Bureau. The average one-way daily commute for workers across the country is 25.5 minutes, and one in four commuters leave their county to work. About 2.2 million workers have “long-distance” commutes that span at least 50 miles in each direction.
The Washington Post report that about 600,000 people make a “megacommute” each workday — with about a quarter of them living in and around the Washington D.C. area. But at least, as the Post points out, as bad as the commuting picture may be, it is not actually getting any worse.
