The True Cost of Commuting: Time, Money and Wellbeing

Each day a week you commute costs the average American about 42 hours and $265 in running costs a year. That assumes the national average commute of 27.2 minutes each way, an assumed 12 miles each way, and an average new car. Go in five days a week and it is about 208 hours a year, more than five full working weeks spent getting to work.

The true cost of commuting is the time, money and wellbeing your trips to work take, counted per year instead of per trip. Time is usually the largest part. The figures above are averages with stated assumptions. To run your own numbers, use the commute cost calculator. This article is the evidence behind it, and how to use the result with your boss without it sounding like a complaint.

Average commute time: US, UK and EU

United States. The mean one-way travel time to work was 27.2 minutes in 2024, up from 26.8 minutes in 2023, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Survey summary. That is 54.4 minutes a day round trip. Of all workers, 9.3% had a one-way trip of an hour or more. Most (69.2%) drove alone, 3.7% took public transport, and 13.3% worked from home.

United Kingdom. The Office for National Statistics measured the commute indirectly, from the other side. In its March 2024 Time Use Survey, people who worked from home on a given day saved an average of 56 minutes by not commuting (ONS, "Who are the hybrid workers?", November 2024). England's National Travel Survey adds scale: commuting accounted for 1,007 miles per person in 2024, more than any other trip purpose (DfT, NTS 2024).

European Union. The most recent Eurostat figure is pre-pandemic. In 2019 the average one-way commute for employed people in the EU was 25 minutes, ranging from 19 minutes in Cyprus to 33 minutes in Latvia. Just over three in five (61.3%) commuted less than 30 minutes, and 8.1% an hour or more (Eurostat, released October 2020).

Different surveys and definitions, but the US, UK and EU figures all land at roughly 50 to 56 minutes a day round trip. The 27-country figure is higher, partly because it covers countries with longer commutes and partly because it measures self-reported time saved rather than a mean commute. If you are one of the roughly one in ten with an hour each way, double the numbers below.

How much does commuting cost in money?

Driving

AAA's 2025 Your Driving Costs study (September 2025) puts the total cost of owning and running a new car at $11,577 a year, or 77 cents a mile at 15,000 miles a year. That figure includes depreciation ($4,334 a year), insurance ($1,694), finance and registration.

Most of that you pay whether or not you drive to the office on Wednesday. The part that moves with each commute mile is the operating cost: fuel at 13 cents a mile and maintenance, repair and tires at 11.04 cents a mile, according to AAA's fact sheet. Call it 24 cents a mile.

So there are two honest numbers:

• The marginal cost is the running cost that changes with each extra mile: about 24 cents a mile. It is what one fewer office day saves you this year.
• The full cost is the total cost of owning and running the car: 77 cents a mile. It is the right number only if fewer commutes would let you drop a car, or keep one longer.

Add parking and tolls on top; they vary too much to average.

Public transport

Fares are local, so check your own operator. Two current reference points:

• In New York, tapping the same card for subway and local bus rides caps the fare at $35 in any seven days (MTA). A three-day commuter takes about six rides a week. Whether that reaches the cap depends on the fare you pay per tap, so check before assuming a home day saves anything.
• In England, regulated rail fares were frozen from March 2026, avoiding a 5.8% rise. The Department for Transport's own examples for a three-day-a-week flexi season show savings of £315 a year on Milton Keynes to London and £173 on Woking to London from the freeze alone (DfT, 2 March 2026).

If your operator sells a part-time ticket like the flexi season, price it against pay-as-you-go before assuming home days save money.

Worked example: one office day a week at the US average

Every number here is either sourced above or a stated assumption. Change any of them in the commute cost calculator.

Assumptions

• Commute: 27.2 minutes each way, the US mean (54.4 minutes a day).
• Distance: 12 miles each way. This is an assumption, not a national average. Use your own.
• Car: average new vehicle, marginal cost 24.04 cents a mile (AAA fuel plus maintenance).
• Working weeks: 46 a year, after holidays and leave. Also an assumption.
• Value of time: $37.81 an hour, the average hourly earnings of private-sector employees in September 2026 (BLS Employment Situation, September 2026 release). This is a reference point for scale, not money anyone pays you.

Result per weekly office day (46 commuting days a year)

Five office days a week is five times that: 208.5 hours, $1,327 in running costs, or $4,250 at the full per-mile rate. Moving from five office days to three gives back 83.4 hours a year, which is more than ten eight-hour days.

The money is modest. The hours are the number that matters in the conversation with your boss.

What people do with the time they get back

The strongest evidence comes from the Global Survey of Working Arrangements, which covers 27 countries. Cevat Giray Aksoy, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Steven Davis, Mathias Dolls and Pablo Zarate used it to measure the time saved (AEA Papers and Proceedings, 2023; NBER working paper). On a home-working day, people saved 72 minutes on average. Across the workforce, that came to about two hours a week per worker in 2021 and 2022.

According to the authors' summary at the Becker Friedman Institute, workers put:

• 40% of the saved time into extra work on primary and secondary jobs
• 34% into leisure
• 11% into caregiving

The ONS time-use data for Great Britain points the same way with a different split. On home-working days, people spent 24 more minutes on sleep and rest and 15 more on exercise, sport and wellbeing than people who travelled to work (ONS, March 2024 data). The ONS also found 10 fewer minutes of work, but says that estimate is not precise enough to rule out chance.

For the conversation with your boss, the 40% is the useful number. A large share of commute time saved goes back into the job. It is the employer's share of the dividend, and it is measured, not promised.

Commuting and wellbeing

The money and hours are easy to count. The wellbeing effects are harder, but they point one way.

• Job satisfaction. Researchers at UWE Bristol followed more than 26,000 employees in England using the Understanding Society survey. Every extra minute of commuting was linked to lower job satisfaction, lower satisfaction with leisure time, more strain and worse mental health. An extra 20 minutes a day had the same effect on job satisfaction as a 19% pay cut (Bristol Health Partners, October 2017). The study is observational: people choose their commute, often in exchange for pay or housing.
• What helps. The same UWE study linked working from home, walking to work and shorter commutes to higher job satisfaction, and found that shorter commutes made employees more likely to stay in their jobs.
• Life satisfaction. ONS analysis of the Annual Population Survey found that commutes of 61 to 90 minutes were associated with lower life satisfaction (ONS, May 2019, summarising its 2014 commuting analysis).
• Staying. In a randomized hybrid trial with 1,612 Trip.com employees, the option of two home days a week cut quit rates by one-third. For employees whose round-trip commute exceeded 1.5 hours, quit rates fell by 52%, although that subgroup estimate is less precise than the headline result (Bloom, Han and Liang, Nature, 2024). That is the version of the wellbeing argument an employer feels in its hiring budget.

None of this says commuting ruins lives. The cost is small per trip, large per year, and shows up in strain and satisfaction.

How to use the number with your boss

The commute is your cost, not your employer's. Opening with "it costs me $1,577 a year" invites "that is why we pay you." Instead:

1. Run the number, then translate it. Put your real minutes and office days into the commute cost calculator. Say it in hours: "Wednesday at home gives back about 42 hours a year."
2. Say where the hours go. Commit the employer's share up front: an earlier start, a focus block, a deliverable. That is the 40% from the Aksoy study, made specific to you.
3. Ask for a reversible trial, not a policy. One or two mid-week days, two to six weeks, with a review date. The guide to convincing your boss walks through the full seven-step ask and the Trip.com evidence behind it. The remote versus office productivity research covers the studies beyond Trip.com.
4. Make the output visible. The hours argument only works if your boss can see the work; when they cannot, proximity bias fills the gap. A short written update on home days does that; the reasoning is in why remote trust is a signal problem. Tools that reconstruct your day, such as DoneThat (which I work for), can draft the update for you; a shared doc does the job if you will keep it up.
5. Put it in writing. The remote work proposal template has a one-page version with a slot for exactly this number.

If your company has already announced a return-to-office rule, read how to respond to a return-to-office mandate first. The commute number still belongs in that conversation, framed as a request for an exception, not a debate about the policy.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does commuting cost per year?

At the US average commute, an assumed 12 miles each way and an average new car, each weekly office day costs about 42 hours and $265 in fuel and maintenance a year, before parking or tolls. At AAA's full 77 cents a mile it is about $850. Your own figure depends mostly on distance and parking.

What is the average commute time?

In the US, the mean one-way commute was 27.2 minutes in 2024, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, and 9.3% of workers spent an hour or more each way. The most recent EU-wide figure is 25 minutes one way, from 2019.

How much does it cost to drive to work per mile?

AAA's 2025 figures put fuel at 13 cents a mile and maintenance, repair and tires at 11.04 cents, so about 24 cents a mile for each extra mile driven. The full cost of owning a new car, including depreciation and insurance, is 77 cents a mile at 15,000 miles a year.

Does working from home actually save time?

Yes. Across 27 countries, people saved 72 minutes on an average home-working day, and about 40% of that went back into work (Aksoy et al., 2023). In Great Britain, home workers saved 56 minutes a day and spent more of it on sleep and exercise (ONS, 2024).

Is a long commute a good argument for remote work?

On its own, no. It is a good reason to ask, and a good reason for the employer to say yes to a trial, because the time largely comes back as work and the drop in quit rates was larger for long commuters (52%, against one-third overall), though that estimate is less precise (Bloom, Han and Liang, 2024).

The bottom line: commuting costs mostly time

The true cost of commuting is mostly time: about 42 hours a year per weekly office day at an average commute, plus a few hundred dollars and a slow drag on satisfaction. Run your own figure in the commute cost calculator linked at the top of this article. Then take it into a short, reversible ask, using the convince-your-boss guide and the proposal template linked above.

For more on making hybrid work visible and credible, browse the remote work articles.

Written by Don, DoneThat's AI coach, so this article is AI-written. Every statistic is linked to its source, the worked example states its assumptions, and where a study's design limits what it can support, that limit is stated next to the number. Reviewed by Christoph Hartmann, founder of DoneThat. More about us; for corrections or questions, contact us.