Before you sign the lease, check the commutes.

There is no universal answer, because the best location is relative to where a company's people live. A building that fits one workforce is wrong for another, and a prestigious address can lose to a modest one across the river. Rent, space, amenities, and convenience for visiting clients count too. But only the commute is paid by every employee twice a day. So start by measuring it: rank the candidate buildings by the employees' own rush-hour commutes.

A commute analysis measures how a workplace fits the people who travel to it. For each candidate building it computes every employee's door-to-door journey at rush hour, driving and public transit, then totals the cost across the workforce. The result is a ranking of buildings by total annual commute-hours, not a list of adjectives.

The commute is a cost every employee pays twice a day, and it compounds: a few minutes each way becomes hundreds of hours a year across a workforce. Commute time shapes who applies, who stays, and how often people come in. When a company weighs a move, the first question employees ask is what it does to their commute.

Companies that care where their people spend their mornings. In practice that means operations and HR leaders planning a move, founders picking a first office, and finance leaders who prefer to settle the question with data rather than office politics. The alternative method, still common, is to weigh one commute only: the chief executive's. A commute analysis is for companies that count all of them.

At the shortlist stage, before selecting a preferred building or signing an LOI. Office relocations often follow a predictable sequence: finance sets the budget, a broker identifies candidate buildings, and the commute question surfaces only after the deal is taking shape. By then, the findings are more likely to generate complaints than influence the decision. Run the analysis while the shortlist is still open, when the results can determine which buildings move forward.

Yes. Commute length and office attendance are closely connected. Asking employees to come in three days instead of one does not change their commute; it changes how often they make it. Commutro measures that impact for your actual workforce, building by building. Your office choice and attendance policy can then be evaluated using the same data.

Commute length is one factor employees consider when deciding whether to stay. A move that adds 30 minutes each way is a meaningful change, but its effect will not be evenly distributed across the workforce. Commutro does not predict attrition. It shows who gains time, who loses it, and by how much, ZIP code by ZIP code. That tells you which parts of your workforce a move affects most.

A map app answers one trip for one person. A commute analysis answers all of them at once: every employee, every candidate building, both modes, at peak, weighted by headcount and totaled over a year. The output is a defensible ranking rather than a guess assembled from individual searches.

No, and the distinction matters. An isochrone map shows the area reachable from a single location within a given travel time. That is useful when evaluating a general labor catchment.

Commutro starts with your workforce. It calculates driving and transit times from each employee ZIP code to every candidate building, weighted by the number of employees in each ZIP code. An isochrone describes a location's reach. Commutro shows how each location affects your actual workforce.

Driving times use typical weekday-morning peak traffic from historical speed profiles. Transit analysis covers rail, subway, light rail, bus, and ferry service, using each agency's published timetables. Results are deterministic, with a pinned traffic reference date and a methodology appendix in every report.

The analysis considers walking to a stop, driving to a park-and-ride station, and being dropped off at a stop by car. Door-to-door times include that first leg, along with typical waiting and transfers, so a commute that starts with a drive to the train is counted the way it is actually made.

Commutro analyzes public transit in 14 US metro areas: New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, Washington, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Miami, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. Driving analysis is available nationwide. For offices outside these metro areas, reports include driving analysis only.

$49, one time, per report, whether you have 8 employees or 800. The instant snapshot is free, so you see preliminary results before you pay.

A full rush-hour analysis of up to 3 candidate buildings against your current office: every employee counted by ZIP code, driving and public transit at weekday morning peak, ranked by total team hours per year. It opens the moment you pay and stays live for at least 90 days, with a link emailed to you, a methodology appendix, and an executive PDF you can download and keep.

Yes. The report is an online link plus an executive PDF. Send them to your leadership team, your broker, or the whole company. The link stays live for at least 90 days; the PDF is yours to keep.

Yes. Commutro also embeds on leasing sites, where landlords offer it to their prospects. Same engine, same methodology, every figure reproducible.

Yes. Tenant-rep brokers buy single reports as client deliverables: run the client's shortlist, pay $49, and send them the report link and the executive PDF. If your brokerage wants Commutro on its own website instead, see Commutro for business.

No one, including Commutro. The analysis works from ZIP codes: employee locations are reduced to ZIP codes on the spot, and street addresses are never stored. Employees can share their data without hesitation, which is what makes the analysis work.

Commutro uses your inputs to compute your report. It may share contact details with landlords and brokers so they can help with your search, and with other third parties. The privacy policy spells out what is shared and how to opt out.