Top 10 US ZIP Codes by Shortest Average Commute
Shortest average one-way commute rankings across US ZIP Code Tabulation Areas, from Census ACS 5-Year Estimates. Rendered server-side from a live SELECT against the PlainZIP zip_demographics table (commute_time_avg field).
Research period:
Research question
Across the 33,000+ ZIP Code Tabulation Areas in the United States, which ZIPs report the shortest average one-way commute to work, and what kinds of places sit at the very bottom of the national commute-time distribution?
Top 10 US ZIP Codes by Shortest Average Commute
Live data, rendered from a SELECT against the portal database at request time.
- 99604
Hooper Bay, AK
5 minutes (avg commute)
- 85346
Quartzsite, AZ
5.9 minutes (avg commute)
- 28310
Fort Bragg, NC
6 minutes (avg commute)
- 85309
Luke Air Force Base, AZ
6.1 minutes (avg commute)
- 98278
Oak Harbor, WA
6.2 minutes (avg commute)
- 99762
Nome, AK
7.3 minutes (avg commute)
- 88330
Holloman Air Force Base, NM
8.1 minutes (avg commute)
- 92278
Twentynine Palms, CA
8.4 minutes (avg commute)
- 57752
Kyle, SD
8.4 minutes (avg commute)
- 28547
Camp Lejeune, NC
8.5 minutes (avg commute)
What this shows The shortest-commute ZIPs report mean one-way travel times well below the national average of about 27 minutes, often where residents work close to home or remotely.
How we built this ranking
ZIPs with more than 1,000 residents are ranked by mean one-way commute minutes, ascending, so the shortest commutes appear first, and the top 10 are returned. Every figure on this page is drawn directly from the current dataset (nothing is hardcoded), so when the U.S. Census Bureau publishes a new American Community Survey vintage, the ranking updates on the next page load.
The commute figure is the ACS mean travel time to work for workers aged 16 and over who did not work from home, measured in minutes. Rows with a null, zero, or suppressed value are excluded rather than shown as zero, so the ranking never surfaces low-information records ahead of complete ones, and genuine outliers are shown as published rather than silently clipped.
One caution when reading this list. The mean travel time only counts workers who commute, so a ZIP with a high work-from-home share can post a very short average even when the few remaining commuters travel far. ACS estimates are also 5-year rolling averages, so a ZIP whose commuting patterns shifted recently can lag the current reality by months to years.
This analysis is fully derived from the current dataset with no hardcoded values, so any reader can reproduce the ranking from the same public source data. See the methodology page for the full data-update process, source vintage, and field definitions.
The ranked top 10
Every row below reflects the current dataset of 10 qualifying records. Figures update automatically as the source data is refreshed.
| # | ZIP | City | State | Commute (min) | Population |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 99604 | Hooper Bay | AK | 5.0 | 1,093 |
| 2 | 85346 | Quartzsite | AZ | 5.9 | 4,423 |
| 3 | 28310 | Fort Bragg | NC | 6.0 | 3,459 |
| 4 | 85309 | Luke Air Force Base | AZ | 6.1 | 1,485 |
| 5 | 98278 | Oak Harbor | WA | 6.2 | 1,065 |
| 6 | 99762 | Nome | AK | 7.3 | 4,038 |
| 7 | 88330 | Holloman Air Force Base | NM | 8.1 | 3,054 |
| 8 | 92278 | Twentynine Palms | CA | 8.4 | 3,846 |
| 9 | 57752 | Kyle | SD | 8.4 | 2,245 |
| 10 | 28547 | Camp Lejeune | NC | 8.5 | 21,884 |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ZIP Code Tabulation Areas Reference Files. Figures reflect the most recently published dataset and update automatically when the source agency issues a revision. U.S. Census Bureau, ZIP Code Tabulation Areas Reference Files. Figures reflect the most recently published dataset and update automatically when the source agency issues a revision.
Findings
Top entity in the ranking
The top-ranked record in this dataset is 99604, with an average one-way commute of 5.0 minutes. The full top-10 set is rendered in the table above. Every value comes directly from the current dataset; no number is hardcoded into this page. When the U.S. Census Bureau publishes a revision, the ranking and the prose around it update automatically.
Distribution shape
Every commute in this top cut is well under five minutes, from 5.0 to 8.5 minutes, clustered among very small or remote communities where workers live beside their jobs. Because these are tiny worker populations, the differences between adjacent ranks fall within the noise of ACS sampling, so the list is best read as identifying the kinds of places with near-zero commutes rather than a precise minute-by-minute ordering. The full distribution beyond this top-10 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.
Aggregate context
Across the full population behind this ranking, here are the summary statistics: how many records exist in total, the sum of the ranking metric across all qualifying records, and the mean per-record value. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied (records with null or zero values on the ranking metric are excluded). This aggregate row is computed from the same dataset that powers the ranking above.
Source provenance
The records in this ranking originate from U.S. Census Bureau, specifically the ZIP Code Tabulation Areas Reference Files. PlainZIP ingests the source vintage published by the agency and keeps this page current, there is no static export carrying stale numbers, and a newly published dataset is reflected here within hours. The methodology page documents the source URL, the vintage date, and the steps applied to prepare the data.
Why this ranking matters
Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records. The methodology page explains how an entity earns inclusion in the dataset and how the ranking column is computed at the source.
What this analysis cannot tell us
Average commute time is reported by the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey for workers aged 16 and over who do not work from home, measured as one-way travel time in minutes. The figure is a 5-year rolling estimate, so it lags sudden changes in local employment or transit service. The shortest-commute ZIPs are overwhelmingly small, remote, or institutional places (Alaska villages, company towns, and campuses) where most workers live within walking distance of their jobs and the worker count is small enough that a handful of responses moves the average. Very small worker samples carry wide ACS margins of error, so these extreme low values are best read as 'workers here barely commute at all' rather than as precise minute counts comparable across large metros.
Secondary cut: largest ZIPs by population
Top 10 ZIPs ranked by absolute resident population, from the same Census source.
- 60629
Chicago
113,916 residents
- 79936
El Paso
111,086 residents
- 11368
Corona
109,931 residents
- 00926
San Juan
108,862 residents
- 90650
Norwalk
105,549 residents
- 90011
Los Angeles
103,892 residents
- 91331
Pacoima
103,689 residents
- 11226
Brooklyn
101,572 residents
- 90201
Bell Gardens
101,279 residents
- 11373
Elmhurst
100,820 residents
What this shows The most populous ZIPs are rarely the ones with the shortest commutes, since a large resident base usually means a larger, more built-up commuter market rather than a small, walk-to-work community.
Sources
- U.S. Census Bureau, ZIP Code Tabulation Areas geographic database, https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs