When should I leave?

Enter when you need to arrive and how long the drive normally takes. This works out your leave-by time and shows whether it lands inside your city's rush hour.

How this works

Your leave-by time is your arrival time minus the drive. The part most people get wrong is the second step: checking whether that drive sits inside the peak. A thirty-minute route at noon is not a thirty-minute route at eight in the morning, so a leave-by time calculated from an off-peak estimate runs late by design.

This tool uses each city's published rush-hour windows rather than a live traffic lookup, which means it works before you set off and without a connection. It tells you when the congestion starts and stops. It cannot tell you about a crash on your specific route this morning.

Common questions

How much earlier should I leave to beat rush hour?

Enough to be off the road before the peak window opens, not fifteen minutes before your usual time. In most metros the peak builds over roughly forty-five minutes, so a departure that clears the start of the window by half an hour behaves very differently from one that clears it by five minutes.

Is it better to leave before rush hour or after it?

Before, in the morning, for most people — the morning peak builds faster than it clears. In the evening the reverse is often true, because the tail of the peak thins out more gradually than it arrives.

Does the day of the week change my leave-by time?

Yes. Friday afternoon peaks start earlier and last longer than other weekdays in most US metros, and Monday mornings carry a heavier load than midweek. If you are hybrid, which day you drive is as big a lever as what time you leave.

Do I need to sign up?

No. This runs entirely in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere.