The good news is, you could commute a mere 16.3 minutes to work.
The bad news is, you’d have to live in Lubbock. The flatland West Texas city has the fastest average commute in the state, according to the latest rankings.
Dallas-Fort Worth area cities, conversely, ranked among the slowest commutes, with Garland winning the dubious distinction of longest commute in the Lone Star state, according to HomeArea.com, which compiled its list from the U.S. Census Bureau’s recently released estimates from the American Community Survey.
The average morning drive in Garland is 29.5 minutes. Fort Worth had the second-longest commute time, at 27.9 minutes, followed by Arlington and Houston at 27.3 minutes apiece.
The average statewide travel time to work from the latest estimates is 26.5 minutes and has risen 0.7 percent since 2017.
The HomeArea.com findings come two weeks after a study by commercial real estate firm JLL found that commutes in North Texas are growing for the simple reason that a large and growing number of North Texans don’t live near where they work.
Almost half of the employed residents in Collin County and more than half in Denton County travel outside their home county to work, according to JLL.
The JLL study also found that as more companies set up in Dallas’ suburbs, the highly educated workers to fill those businesses’ jobs are increasingly choosing to live in the city’s urban core, causing longer “reverse commutes.” The term refers to workers driving from homes in or near the city center to jobs in the suburbs.
The average American commuter loses 42 hours per year — a full work week — driving to and from work. People with long commutes pay more for gas, and typically get less sleep, have more fat and are less happy than people who don’t, studies show.