Philly commutes are getting slightly quicker, but they’re among the longest in the U.S.

Philadelphia workers’ commutes are shorter now than in pre-pandemic years, but their journeys to work are still longer than those in many other U.S. cities.

Philadelphia workers spent more time commuting last year than the national average for workers in the 50 largest U.S. cities, according to a report by online real estate marketplace CommercialCafe, using U.S. Census Bureau data.

While workers in Philadelphia spent 31.1 minutes traveling to work in 2023, the national average was 26.8 minutes, according to the report.

And Philadelphians spent more time commuting on average that year than the average worker in San Francisco, Washington D.C., and Boston. In New York City, workers spent 40.1 minutes getting to work on average.

Cities with the longest commutes are ones that rely more on public transit, which can be slower, says Erick Guerra, associate professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania. But public transit is also cheaper, he noted.

“In those cities, driving is also quite slow,” Guerra said, noting that big cities tend to have longer commutes. Getting to work is just one reason people travel, and the data don’t shed much light on what overall traffic patterns look like in these cities, he added.

Traffic congestion — for all drivers, not just those going to work — has been worsening in Philadelphia in the past few years. A significant rise from 2021 to 2022, tracked by transportation analytics firm INRIX, was attributed to pandemic recovery, and congestion continued to increase in 2023, INRIX found.

The CommercialCafe report used data from the American Community Survey in the 50 most populous U.S. cities. The average commute time is considered a one-way trip to work.

» READ MORE: Philadelphia’s Black workers spend 34 more minutes per week commuting than white workers, new report says

While Philadelphians have longer commutes than the national average, their time spent in transit has declined slightly since before the pandemic.

In 2019, workers in Philadelphia were spending on average 34.3 minutes in transit, compared to 31.5 in 2022 and 31.1 in 2023, according to the report. The seemingly small decline between the last two years amounts to spending about 3 hours less annually in transit.

That difference could be within the data’s margin of error, though, says Guerra.

The national average commute time increased, the report indicates, with workers spending roughly 3 more hours on the road in the last year.

Commute time is just one piece of a larger, continually changing picture of how people live and work in Philadelphia.

The remote workforce has also decreased in the last year, according to the report, which defined this group as those who work at least partially remotely.

The number of remote workers shrank in Philadelphia from 19.4% of the workforce in 2022 to 16.2% in 2023, landing at 120,545 people, the report indicates. That’s in line with the national trend.

» READ MORE: Super commuters are having a resurgence. Here’s what it’s like to actually travel 90 minutes to work.

In July, Philadelphia municipal workers who had previously been on a hybrid schedule returned to full-time on-site work. That was the first time since the start of the pandemic that the group of over 25,000 employees were required to work fully from their offices.

Earlier this year, in February, Mayor Cherelle Parker also called on businesses to bring their employees back to in-person work. And many workers have already returned to the office on a more frequent basis.

Comcast last year increased its in-person requirement for most of its headquarters employees to four days a week. This year, Independence Blue Cross dropped its “hybrid of choice” model, instead instructing employees to begin reporting to the office three full days a week. And in September, SEPTA told nonunion office workers that they will only be allowed to work remotely once a week, starting in November.

Meanwhile, more people have moved into Center City than have moved out since 2020, The Inquirer reported in February. Compared to other U.S. cities, Philadelphia has one of the largest populations of people living downtown, Prema Katari Gupta, president and chief executive officer of Center City District, has said.

At the same time, Center City office occupancy has continued to lag behind pre-pandemic levels. In 2023, 8.1 million square feet of office space were vacant, up from 4.2 million in 2019.

Also lagging has been SEPTA’s ridership recovery. In July, SEPTA’s systemwide ridership was 73% of pre-pandemic levels, compared with the same month in 2019, and the agency is facing a $240 million operating deficit which began this summer.