Four minutes every work day. That's how much less time Miami-Dade commuters are spending going to and from their jobs.
That adds up to more than 15 hours less over the course of a year compared to 2019.
Many South Florida workers may be experiencing slightly less time in traffic as they make their way to work and home again, but the region continues to have some of the nation's longest commute times.
Still, data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows most regional commute times remain below where they were the year before the COVID-19 pandemic reshuffled the economy, and how companies and employees think about remote work.
Workers in Miami-Dade County have saved the most time — about 15 hours a year. It's a substantial annual drop that comes from shaving just two minutes off commute times each way to and from work. Over the course of a year, four minutes less each day in traffic equals more than 15 hours of less commuting time.
Palm Beach County commuters also have enjoyed a slightly shorter trip as compared to 2019. Average annual commute times there was down about two and a half hours, or a little more than 30 seconds less per day.
Broward County is the exception. The average commute in Broward has increased since before the pandemic. The trip to work took 24 seconds longer in 2023 than it did in 2019. Those seconds add up to an extra three hours and 20 minutes traveling to and from work over the course of a year.
The jump in commute times does not surprise Greg Stuart, executive director of the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization.
"The increase in delays were anticipated with the approval of billions in construction over the past five years. On top of that, Broward County went back to in-person work much earlier than Miami-Dade and Palm Beach," he said.
The Broward MPO is responsible for transportation planning and coordination across the county. Stuart noted there has been construction on most major expressways in the county that carrying volumes of traffic — I-95, I-75, the Florida Turnpike and the Sawgrass Expressway.
"Good news is we have built and redone most of our mainline expressways and the corresponding exits. I would anticipate that the delays will see improvement in the next decade because of all the work we have done," Stuart said.
More work and WFH
The number of people working across the region has increased as the economy first bounced back from COVID restrictions and then continued growing. That has led to commuting times climbing again as they did for several years before the pandemic.
More people are working now than in 2019. The number of workers is up about 2% in Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe Counties. Palm Beach County has seen a much more significant increase as financial firms and other industries have moved or expanded there. The number of workers in Palm Beach County is up almost three and a half percent since 2019 — that’s almost 25,000 more workers in just a few years. And many of them have to travel to and from work at least sometimes.
The bulk of workers travel in their vehicles when going to work. The proportion of commuters using public transportation is about the same as it was in 2019.
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The pandemic introduced a new acronym for many, WFH, work from home.
If one could work from home one did during the early weeks and months of the virus. Then, once workers got a taste of commuting from the kitchen to a home office, many wanted to keep doing it, at least occasionally avoiding the more traditional commute.
Before the pandemic, about 95% of South Florida workers went to a job outside their home. By 2023, that had fallen to about 85%. That’s tens of thousands of people who now may be working from home and not crowding the roads.
Overall, the average commute time in all of South Florida was 29 and a half minutes in 2023. That makes it one of the longest of any major metro areas in the country. That's longer than Philadelphia, Dallas and Seattle, but faster than New York, Washington and Atlanta.
And it’s not the longest in Florida. Workers in the Lakeland-Winter Haven area spend about 32 and a half minutes getting to work. That could be because they are traveling to the Tampa or Orlando areas along the I-4 corridor.
Some suburban and rural communities such as Cape Coral and Punta Gorda also have longer commute times, perhaps because workers in those communities just live further away from their jobs.
Figuring out the cost of commuting isn't simple. Time equals money, as the cliché goes, but the cost depends upon several factors; how much a worker earns, the cost of fuel, the expense of insurance, maintenance and the opportunity cost of being stuck in traffic. Many estimates do not figure in the cost of fixing roads, tolls, health costs or housing expenses from living further away from work.
An analysis by LendingTree estimated the traditional commute in Miami cost workers about $39 per day. That's a little less than $10,000 per year, or about $500 more than the national average.
