County Drive Times

Drive times between our different locations is a key piece of information which helps with a lot of decisions - where priests live, where priests work, how to set the Mass schedule, where to hold major events, etc. These decisions might also be made with other factors in mind, but drive times always play a part.

In order to develop the list of drive times below, I used Google Maps directions during the 3pm hour on Tuesday, April 09. I wanted to make sure to use a high traffic time, so that these numbers would be on the higher end of what is normal (i.e. worst case, but not accounting for accidents or construction). I took the drive times going to and from each location and averaged them, rounding up. This table is easiest to read if you start at the top, read down, and then turn the corner at “\”. (For Bellingham, just read across.)

	Blaine	Deming	Fairhaven	Ferndale	Lummi	Lynden
Bellingham	27	33	10	19	17	30
Blaine	\	49	30	18	25	24
Deming		\	38	39	42	36
Fairhaven			\	22	21	33
Ferndale				\	10	24
Lummi					\	30

I then wanted to know certain statistics, to help me better understand the meaning of the table above.

	Median	Average	Max
Bellingham	23	23	33
Blaine	26	29	49
Deming	39	40	49
Fairhaven	26	26	38
Ferndale	21	22	39
Lummi	23	24	42
Lynden	30	30	36

The median column represents the “typical” person’s drive time to a certain place. The average column represents the same as the median, but weighted to account for particularly rough drive times from certain campuses. The max column represents the worst drive times to that location.

If we were to draw any conclusion from this, it would be two:

1. Ferndale is the closest campus for the most number of people, followed by Bellingham and Lummi (both within 2 minutes).

2. Bellingham is the campus that is closest for all people, with no one having to drive more than 33 minutes past their preferred campus.