Commute from Packard Row to Ann Arbor's Tech Corridor

Markdown duplicate of /guides/commute-to-ann-arbor-tech-corridor.

# Commute from Packard Row to Ann Arbor's Tech Corridor

Google, Duo, ProQuest, Thomson Reuters — Ann Arbor's tech offices sit west of Packard. Drive times, routes, and which days you'll wish you took I-94.

- **Canonical page:** https://www.packardrow-annarbor.com/guides/commute-to-ann-arbor-tech-corridor
- **Markdown page:** https://www.packardrow-annarbor.com/markdown/guides/commute-to-ann-arbor-tech-corridor
- **Last modified:** 2026-06-09

## Guide metadata

- **Published:** 2026-06-09
- **Updated:** 2026-06-09
- **Author:** Packard Row leasing
- **Theme:** commute
- **Target query:** apartments near Google Ann Arbor commute
- **Reading time:** 5 minutes
- **Primary keyword:** commute to Ann Arbor tech offices
## At a glance

- **~12 min:** to Google Ann Arbor
- **~10 min:** to ProQuest HQ
- **I-94:** or surface streets
Ann Arbor's tech industry isn't one street. Google sits in the Liberty Square area downtown. ProQuest is off Eisenhower. Thomson Reuters is north of the river. Duo Security and a cluster of smaller engineering shops anchor around Main. The "corridor" runs from downtown south through the Briarwood area, and which route you actually drive depends entirely on whose payroll you're on.

So this is broken out by office. What the route looks like. Which days it changes. Where the corridor fits into a real week.

## Google Ann Arbor

About twelve minutes by car. Packard north to State, west on Liberty into downtown. Google's block sits off Main in the renovated buildings that have quietly become the default tech address. Parking goes to the State Street structures or to Forest. Google offers parking subsidies; the lot itself depends on what's open.

Morning peak is 8 to 9. Outside that window the drive is closer to ten. Late afternoon coming home, southbound on State is sometimes worse than the morning trip because it overlaps with the U-M class shift change. If you're a 9-to-6 person, plan for that.

By bike, around twenty-five minutes. Up Hill, west to Forest, through central campus and into downtown. A real bike commute, not a hypothetical one. Google's office has indoor bike parking, and a serious chunk of their staff uses it year-round.

## ProQuest

About ten minutes by car. The ProQuest headquarters is off Eisenhower Parkway south of I-94, by Briarwood. The standard route from Packard: south on Packard to Stadium, west on Stadium to State, south on State to Eisenhower. Three miles. The drive is consistent because there's no rush-hour bottleneck on Stadium-to-Eisenhower.

Parking at ProQuest is easy. As commutes in this guide go, this is the easiest one. By bike, about twenty minutes on the Stadium Boulevard lane, but Stadium is a four-lane road and the noise is real. Not everyone takes to it.

## Thomson Reuters

About fifteen minutes by car. The Ann Arbor office is north of the river off Plymouth Road. Washtenaw east, then US-23 north to the Plymouth Road exit. The drive is clean off-peak. The first northbound merge onto US-23 can stack up weekday mornings between 8 and 9.

There's no honest bike commute to this office. The river crossing plus Plymouth Road traffic makes cycling a bad idea. Drive, or in good weather ride to central campus and grab Route 65 north. The bus trip is long. Most people don't.

## Duo and the Main Street cluster

The Main Street cluster — Duo (now part of Cisco), Llamasoft, a half-dozen smaller engineering shops — sits in the downtown grid. About twelve minutes by car, same route as Google. Once you're in the core, the offices are mostly within a five-minute walk of each other.

Bike commute is the same Hill Street route as Google. Some downtown offices have secured racks. Others lean on the city's public ones, which fill up by 9am in the school year.

## I-94 or surface streets

For anywhere south of I-94 — ProQuest, the tech offices around State near Briarwood — surface streets usually beat the interstate. The extra interchange and the on-ramp lights eat the savings. I learned this the hard way commuting to Briarwood in 2023.

For anywhere north of the river — Thomson Reuters, the Plymouth Road area — US-23 wins. Don't try to thread Burns Park around it. You won't beat the highway.

The exception is summer construction. Most years, one of Stadium, Washtenaw, or State has a long repaving stretch from June through August. Check the city's map in May.

## When the commute changes

Football Saturdays. State Street is unusable for hours before kickoff. The downtown tech offices closer to Main are mostly closed Saturday anyway, but if you're going in on a weekend during football season, take Stadium west to Main and come at downtown from the south.

Art Fair. Mid-July. Downtown closes to vehicles for about a week. If your office is in the Main Street cluster, bike or take the bus. Route 5 still runs and drops you near the closures.

Winter. US-23 is a state highway and gets plowed early. Packard, Stadium, the main arterials get plowed before the side streets. The morning after a heavy snow, leave fifteen minutes early and stick to the arterials. The real risk is black ice on the river crossings.

Office optional days. Most Ann Arbor tech offices run hybrid. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are the heavy in-office days. Monday and Friday traffic on the corridor is noticeably lighter than midweek. If your remote days are flexible, putting the focused-work block on Tuesday and going in Monday is a small but real time savings.

## Why the building matters for hybrid work

Three days in, two at home, and the apartment matters more than the drive. A 600-square-foot one-bedroom that worked fine when you were in five days a week starts to feel like a closet when you're doing four-hour Zoom blocks from the kitchen table. The [home-office 2BR guide](/guides/home-office-2br-layouts) walks through which Packard Row plans actually fit a real desk, a second monitor, and a couch that isn't shoved against drywall. Pine (1,022 sq ft, the largest 2BR) is the layout most tech residents pick, with Hemlock (900 sq ft) as the step-down option.

The building's own spec is the other piece. [Smart locks and smart thermostats in every home](/guides/smart-home-apartments-ann-arbor) match what most newly-relocated tech workers had at their last place. [On-site EV charging](/guides/ev-charging-at-packard-row) ends the daily question of where to plug in. In San Francisco or Seattle these are baseline. In Ann Arbor's rental stock, they're rare.

## The case for the Packard corridor

Most of Ann Arbor's tech offices sit inside a fifteen-minute drive of 2111 Packard. None are walkable, but the same is true of most of the city — Ann Arbor is small enough that you don't need to live next door to your office, and big enough that no single block is close to all of them.

What the Packard side gives you is consistency. Google, ProQuest, Thomson Reuters all land within five minutes of each other off the same starting point. If your team relocates or you change jobs, the commute math holds. Not a flashy reason to sign a lease. A stable one.

The rest of the tech-professional checklist fits too: 2025 construction, [rooftop solar](/guides/rooftop-solar-apartments), floor plans you can actually run a home office in.

## Touring with commute in mind

The leasing team can route a tour to start from your office. If you're seriously considering the move, leaving work at 5pm and pulling up at the building twelve minutes later is the most useful test you can run. [Book a tour](/lp/ann-arbor-tech).

## Related guides

- [home-office-2br-layouts](https://www.packardrow-annarbor.com/guides/home-office-2br-layouts)
- [smart-home-apartments-ann-arbor](https://www.packardrow-annarbor.com/guides/smart-home-apartments-ann-arbor)