The best cities for commuters are revealed, with locals getting to work in an average of just 22 minutes

The quickest commutes in the US have been revealed, with the shortest trip to work coming in at just under 22 minutes.

Ride-share company Lyft and Harris Poll teamed up to conduct a wide-ranging analysis of which cities had the fastest, cheapest and even cleanest commutes.

Based on data from the 2022 US Census, three cities stood out for their shockingly fast commutes: Columbus, Ohio; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Memphis, Tennessee.

All three cities had commutes of 22 minutes or less, with Columbus and Memphis also offering the cheapest commutes.

Census data finds that the average worker spends 26.8 minutes traveling to work, but shaving just three minutes off that time each way can save them 13 hours a year, according to the analysis.

Overall, Columbus ranked as the best city for commuters, based largely on speed and low cost of transportation. 

Fort Worth, Texas; Detroit, Michigan; and Memphis had the fastest commutes when measured by miles per hour traveled using Lyft data.

These cities have less bumper-to-bumper traffic, allowing people to drive faster and making the trip to work far less painful. 

'Just getting around town is very simple,' said Vahid Behzadi, describing his Fort Worth commute to The Wall Street Journal. 'It's a big city, but it's not overwhelmed with traffic.'

Behzadi, 45, drives to Fort Worth a couple times a week from his home in Frisco, about 50 miles away. 

It takes him about 45 minutes on the highway, though he said there's the option of a toll road if there's traffic on the highway.

Before moving to Texas, he spent 15 years commuting in Los Angeles.

'In L.A., any time of the day, you're probably stuck somewhere,' he said.

The biggest city with the fastest commute was San Diego, with workers taking an average of 24.2 minutes to get to the office. 

The cities with the best commutes had effective urban planning, well-run public transit systems or smaller populations traveling on bigger roadways, transportation researchers and city officials told the Journal.

Memphis has installed a 150-mile fiber optic network to interconnect its traffic lights so city employees can manage traffic jams in real time. 

The technology, which covers roughly 70 percent of all traffic signals in the city, has reduced average travel time on major roads by about 20 percent, the city's senior traffic engineering administrator said.

In Columbus, Jeremy Adams gave insight into his commute, which takes him roughly a half hour.

'You pretty much have a highway available to you within a 10-minute to 15-minute drive,' Adams, a director of IT certificate programs at Columbus State Community College, said of the suburbs he lives in. 

'There's usually two or three ways to get somewhere in about the same amount of time.'

Adams explained that having multiple routes makes Columbus much different than other cities he's commuted in, including Atlanta. 

He said during a business trip to Norcross, Georgia, he sat in 30 minutes of traffic trying to get to his office from his hotel - when the trip should have only taken 10 minutes. 

Commute times have practically returned to pre-pandemic levels now that more companies are requiring employees to come back into the office after years of remote or hybrid work.

Although urban planning has a huge effect on commute times, there is still data that suggests larger cities in general do have more delays and clogged roads.

New York City, which has the cleanest commute thanks to the vast majority of residents taking the subway or city buses instead of cars, still sees plenty of people in surrounding counties driving in. 

Those driving into New York wasted an average of 101 hours in 2023 sitting in traffic, according to transportation research firm Inrix.

Chicago and Los Angeles, America's third and second largest cities behind New York, sapped drivers of 96 hours and 89 hours, respectively.

Boston, where drivers still lose 88 hours a year, is a clear outlier because of its relatively small size compared to New York, which has 12 times the people.

Eric Bourassa, director of transportation at Boston's Metropolitan Area Planning Council, said residents are well aware of the disadvantages of driving in the city.

'On a Saturday night, it might take you 20 minutes to get home, but on a Friday afternoon, it might take you six times as long. People feel that,' he said.

That may be why Boston has such a high number of people who walk to work. 

A full 13 percent of commuters walk to their jobs in the city, when the average is just 3 percent, according to the analysis.