Here’s How Much Time You’ll Waste Commuting in Your Lifetime, by City

When I was in radio, town to town, up and down the dial, I tried to find housing within walking distance of work, because I always had old and unreliable cars. Even in my last radio job, which was after I bought my first house, I was delighted that it was within walking distance. Then only a few months into the job, the station moved out to the suburbs. Sigh.

Now my commute is about five seconds from the bed to the office desk, although I usually detour to the kitchen for coffee.

The colors and dots make it look like there is a vast difference, but the number scale only shows a factor of about two between the smallest and largest dots. There is a concept known as Marchetti's constant, where commuting times tend to trend toward the same average values under a wide variety of conditions. E.g. if you make improve roads and mass transit to make commutes faster, people will tend to spread out and live further away. This makes it not too surprising that you can find small towns that have long average commutes comparable to some larger towns. This also complicates urban planning, because it can seem like improvements don't change anything and that there is a natural commute time people will put up with anyway.

Looks just like a map of housing prices in the US.
Makes sense, because when housing gets too expensive, people are forced to live farther away. Which leads to longer commute distances.