SAN DIEGO — With gas prices as high as they are, commutes and the time they take are in the forefronts of a lot of people’s minds. According to a new study performed by Geotab, San Diegans have the shortest average car commute in the United States. However, if you take public transportation in America’s Finest City your commute doubles to 52 minutes which puts the city right in the middle of the pack with big cities across the country.
San Diego was also identified as the most reachable, with 72% of commuters able to access the city within 30 minutes. If the commuter has a car the figure rises to 77%, although only 17% of public transit users can commute into the city within that same half hour.
The cities with the longest commutes are Wasngton D.C. at 41 minutes, Boston and New York City at 40 minutes, San Francisco at 36 minutes and Chicago at 35 minutes. The other cities with the shortest commutes are Phoenix and Minneapolis at 27 minutes, Portland at 28 minutes and Orlando rounding out at 29 minutes.
For the study, Geotab looked at more than a million commutes then calculated the mean commute times from census tract areas across the United States travelling into 20 of the biggest cities.
News 8 wanted to put this new study to the test. Kerri Lane was put into the car and told to see how far she could get in morning rush hour in 30 minutes.