500 words on LA Traffic

It will rain tonight. It is supposed to rain for most of the weekend. Since Los Angeles averages about 11 inches of rain annually – with as little as 3 ½ in 2007 – you can bet that the impending “storm” will make a big splash. It will affect nothing more that traffic.

Living in Los Angeles, I bore quickly of the “Angelenos Can’t Drive In the Rain” stories. We don’t drive as well as Seattleites but we don’t need, too. Last year, we got 10% of the rain of Seattle. We don’t get much weather here, so it makes sense that we don’t drive as well in the little we get.

But the phenomenon isn’t limited to rainy days. The media and culture have us convinced that Los Angeles is the worst place to drive in the world. Clearly they’ve never been to Medford, Oregon. (At least we get to pump our own gas!)

Living in Los Angeles means we talk about traffic a lot. We discuss different routes and reveal secret streets to our friends. (My commute to work has me cutting through residential neighborhoods and weaving among minivans and full-length skirted Jewish women outside of four Orthodox temples and schools, but it saves ten minutes from the big streets.) Hybrid car technology has us bragging about our MPG-maximization. We love, no, live to talk about our driving. And with all the talking we do, did you know that less than a quarter of all Angelenos have a commute of more than 35 minutes? According to the 2000 Census, 71% have commutes under 35 minutes and another 5% work from home. A full third of us commute less than 20 minutes. We might spend more time in our cars than the denizens of any other American metropolis, but not much longer.

Our average commute time, according to a 2006 study, is 28 minutes, but according to the Texas Transportation Institute, we spend about half of the time -- 16 minutes a day -- sitting in congestion. Those 16 minutes can be aggravating. If only we lived in a transit option-rich environment like New York. Imagine all the time we could save? Not much, apparently. The average New York spends 6 more minutes a day commuting. But the money, we can save the money? Driving about 12,000 miles a year (some people drive more) in a 20 mpg vehicle (most cars today get more) and your daily commute drive in Los Angeles costs around $3.00. In New York, you’ll spend about $3.00 a day on your unlimited MetroCard.

Is Los Angeles traffic great? Absolutely not. My argument is that Los Angeles traffic is about what you can expect in comparable metropolitan areas. Yes, you could live in Grand Forks, North Dakota or Asheville, North Carolina and get hundreds of hours of your life back. But you’d be living in Grand Forks. I’m pretty sure that there isn’t a vibrant food truck community, active theatre scene, or Getty Center in Grand Forks.


This interchange downtown is guarenteed to be congested just about any time of day. On LA freeways, usually Saturday or Sundays mornings bring a little reprieve, but not here.