13 ms·
LA doesn't have a traffic problem. People just have overly high expectations. As someone who has also lived and commuted in lots of cities around the world, LA
by reillyse 10y ago
LA doesn't have a traffic problem. People just have overly high expectations.
As someone who has also lived and commuted in lots of cities around the world, LA just doesn't have that much of a problem.
What other major city in the world would you expect to be able to drive 15 miles through the centre at rush hour and get to your destination in under an hour (I'm using as reference Downtown LA to Santa Monica at 9am, typically takes 35 to 1h 5min according to google maps). Good luck in London, Paris, NYC or Tokyo never mind Delhi or Beijing.
The line made famous by clueless that everywhere in LA takes 20 minutes is completely true, with the caveat being, so long as you don't drive during traffic. This reality is what people are comparing their rush hour commute to, they know that if they are lucky enough to avoid traffic they will get there in 20 minutes, but when they hit bad traffic it takes an hour. (Obviously I'm ignoring stuck on the 405 for 5 hour nightmare stories here, I'm just talking about day to day driving.)
LA is a victim of having too good a car infrastructure, it allows people to make ridiculous commuting decisions and get away with it the majority of the time. Adding more traffic infrastructure just makes the problem worse. People can drive from further away and save money on their housing and they will. They'll also work in places that are further away, the problem is as much about where businesses are located as it is about where people live.
- steveax 10y ago> Downtown LA to Santa Monica at 9am That's against traffic. What does Santa Monica to Downtown LA at 9am take? A big problem in LA is that many people drive much longer distances than that, 30, 50, 70 miles one way in their commute.
- gyrgtyn 10y agoI think my record was 3.5 hours from Brentwood to Long Beach on a Friday evening. I got a job in OC and then they kept giving me assignments on the west side. (How is there no train parallel to 405?) I guess that's the difference that the OP isn't accounting for; It's not that downtown is crowded at rush hour - It's like a billion square miles of solid cars from 6am-10am and 1:30pm to 7pm. (The freeway might be OK at lunch time, but streets sure aren't) The guy talking about Beijing... What a dystopia. How many years until LA is like that?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bagacrap 10y agoI don't think so actually. In my experience eastbound 10 backs up about half an hour after westbound 10. In my experience the morning commute is not as bad as the evening. SM to DT in the evening is easily 2 hours. Heck, it can take an hour to get out of SM. This is because commuting traffic mixes with beach/tourism/other. The other problem is there is no "rush hour" as the grandparent implies. LA is constantly bad, whereas places like the Bay Area have distinct rush hours.
- idlewords 10y agoLondon, Paris, NYC and Tokyo all have a comprehensive subway system and light rail covering the extended metro area. For many parts of LA, driving (or taking a bus through terrible traffic) is the only option.
- reillyse 10y agoSure, but travelling on those systems takes a long time. When I lived in London a 1 hour commute was seen as totally normal. That was by train and I had a very direct single overground train to take (Kentish town to Chiswick if I remember).
- eigenvector 10y agoAn hour reading, sleeping or just zoned out on a train is a lot less fatigue than an hour operating a car in stop-and-go traffic.
- closeparen 10y ago20 minutes standing on a violently accelerating and decelerating train while strangers' bodies are touching you is much more fatiguing than 2 hours at a standstill in a car (BART is far and away the worst part of every workday, while even the slowest trips to Monterey or Tahoe are a blast, but maybe that's just me).
- pyromine 10y agoComparing the mental fatigue of your work commute versus vacation travel is like comparing apples and oranges.
- sampo 10y ago> BART is far and away the worst part of every workday BART is loud, rattly, screechy, wobbly, and generally feels like it could fall apart any moment. I wonder if even third world countries are able to produce trains that bad. But in developed parts of the world, trains are quiet and clean and run smoothly. In general when Americans say they don't like public transit, they mean they don't like American public transit, because it is so badly done in America.
- xenihn 10y ago>What other major city in the world would you expect to be able to drive 15 miles through the centre at rush hour and get to your destination in under an hour It takes thirty minutes to go a mile in traffic where I'm at (West LA, near Brentwood and Santa Monica). Then an hour to go 5 miles in any direction on the 10 or 405. It's really bad.
- seanmcdirmid 10y agoI just moved to LA (westwood) from Beijing last August. The traffic here is so light in LA compared to Beijing, and the air is really clean as well. In Beijing, it could take me a couple of hours to get home on 4th ring, 3rd ring was worse! And the traffic didn't disappear at 7PM, maybe 8 or 9.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- reillyse 10y agoI think a half hour for 1 mile is definitely the exception not the rule. I could see it happening if there was a major accident blocking all of the lanes of the freeway but thats about it. For surface streets I think traffic dissipates much quicker unless you are talking about a specific choke point like crossing the 405 or getting on the freeway.
- mdorazio 10y agoWhich direction? I live near you and regularly commute to the South Bay. It usually takes under half an hour to go 20 miles on 405. If you live and work on the wrong traffic pattern (ex. live in South Bay, commute north) then yes, you're going to have a bad time. If you move somewhere where your commute is against traffic then it's really not bad at all.
- inferiorhuman 10y agoI drove SF to San Diego last year. Taking 710 from I-5 to CA-91 took well over an hour. Absolute insanity.
- bootloop 10y agoI don't know. I am from europe and visited a few north american cities in the past, including LA. No or bad public transport was the norm but LA was a whole other level. You get out of the airport and there is a endless line of car rental places after each other. That makes it clear to you that you won't get far without a car. Going into the city or out takes you on a ridiculous wide highway which is basically a permanent traffic jam. And in general it seems like a car is a first class citizen in this city. (As you said, so much car infrastructure.) So wierd. If it isn't for work I would not go there ever again I guess.
- reillyse 10y agoYes car is king in LA. In recent years though Lyft/Uber have changed the game a lot. I'd say it's cost effective to not have a car at this stage, especially when you add in the cost of parking.
- jhbadger 10y agoIt depends on what you mean by LA. LA itself actually has fairly decent public transit (by US standards, not NYC, but by nearly every other city) -- the RapidBus busses are actually fairly rapid (they can control stoplights so they always hit green) and the Metro is quite nice where it goes.
- trome 10y agoI'd rather be anywhere in Seattle or Portland trying to use mass transit rather than in LA, its so spread out due to zoning (requiring abundant, unused parking, and limiting building height) and all of my past experiences there have been piss poor with mass transit in LA. San Diego is slightly better, but it has the same issue as LA with zoning. I do not think I could reliably take the bus to work in LA or San Diego, whereas in Seattle or Portland I grew up riding it and I know I'll get there reliably.
- jhbadger 10y agoInteresting that you mention San Diego. I used to live there and actually took the bus to work. But I'd say mass transit is actually better in LA (which I would use while visiting) than SD. In San Diego, busses came generally only once an hour and most stopped running after 7:30pm making it impossible to use them to go somewhere after work. LA buses generally ran all day and every 15-30 minutes. which made them much more convenient.
- shams93 10y agoI've lived in LA my whole life, its only been in the last 4 years or so I haven't had to have a car. I live by the redline and just use the train system. With the expo line the reach of the train system is really amazing if you remember what it was like to drive through brutal traffic to get from say hollywood to santa monica.
- ng-user 10y agoSeriously, there are worse cities than LA. Toronto has arguably the worst traffic in North America [0] [0] - http://oppositelock.kinja.com/the-busiest-highway-in-north-america-1559577839 http://oppositelock.kinja.com/the-busiest-highway-in-north-a...
- inferiorhuman 10y agoAlso has that 18-lane monstrosity.
- memco 10y ago> The line made famous by clueless that everywhere in LA takes 20 minutes is completely true, with the caveat being, so long as you don't drive during traffic. Another way to interpret this is: nowhere you want to go is ever < 20 min. from your current location. This includes places like grocery stores or other neighborhood locales because even though they are close, traffic can still make a half-mile commute take 20 min.
- sokoloff 10y agoIf you have a half-mile commute that takes 20 minutes by car and you regularly do that commute by car, I don't think that traffic is the biggest problem in your life.
- spoonie 10y agoYou can walk a half mile in 20 minutes, never mind biking. Why do people drive that short of distances in CA? Even if it's for groceries, bring a backpack and shop more frequently.
- deepGem 10y agoDelhi is a bad example. I'm not saying Delhi's traffic is any better. You have an alternative to driving. Delhi has some respectable public transit. The Delhi metro is rapidly growing and expanding to cover every facet of the city. If you want to truly experience terrible traffic please come to Bangalore. It'll take an hour to cover just 5 miles, if you are lucky. One of the absolute worst cities to commute. The public transit is laughable at best. The Bangalore Metro, once it becomes fully operational sometime in March-April 2017 might do some good. I'll sit in LA traffic for an hour any day, as compared to sitting in Bangalore traffic even for 15 mins. The road rage is unfathomable.
- praneshp 10y agoStarting 2011,I used to go to Bangalore once a year. The number of trees cut down, the number of new cars on the road, and the terrific traffic all boggled my mind. Car after car of software engineers, probably perfectly pleasant to work with, would just lay on the horns despite knowing perfectly well that the first car was stopped at a red light. If I ever go back to India, Bangalore is the first city that's off my list of places to live in.
- trome 10y agoThat is just plain stupid, short of being a giant asshole, you don't lay on the horn cause someone respected a light/stop sign. Sounds like a city to avoid.
- simplehuman 10y agoIt's clear you have not been to most Asian cities.
- praneshp 10y agoDepends on whether you consider respecting the light a hindrance to traffic or not. But I did think Bangalore was a little worse than where I'm from, probably because there were more entitled folks.
- rtpg 10y agoAccording to Google Maps[0], driving 15 miles through Tokyo (going through several high-traffic areas) seems to take 1h15. Agreed that if businesses aren't properly spread out, then rush hour traffic will always be bad. What else can you expect if your city effectively shrinks to 1/10th its size every day at 9 AM and 6 PM? [0]:https://goo.gl/maps/YSwaooCWK3y https://goo.gl/maps/YSwaooCWK3y
- ojii 10y agoOr half an hour with public transport (your route).
- rtpg 10y agoSo it's a half an hour for this start and end point, but that's mainly because they're both on the border of the "city center" (Yamanote line). I live just outside the center (to the north, Ouji-Kamiya), and my workplace is just outside the city center (to the south, Naka-meguro), and it takes me about an hour door-to-door to cut across the city (50 minutes station to station), with 2 transits. This is probably the longest possible way to cut across the city in public transportation, but I think you can expect 45 minutes to cut across in general, given transits. The other problem is that the center is less than 15 miles in diameter, so a bit hard to get the same "feel" as LA for the comparison.
- myrandomcomment 10y agoSo strange enough that route made no sense (it made a Y). What options did you pick? Switched to the train and it said 36 minutes. Switched back to car and it was 35 minutes (18.5km) and the route had corrected itself. You did something wrong. I lived in Tokyo and the routine in the link you shared is not correct.
- rtpg 10y agoI made a multi-point route from Ikebukuro to.... iidabashi, then akihabara, then roppongi area, then down to shinagawa. It was mainly to get the 15 mile requirement while driving through downtown areas.
- nkrisc 10y agoI just got back from my first trip to LA and my impression is the same. I stayed with a relative in Venice, met a friend in Silver Lake, and went downtown the next day. The amount of travel was pretty crazy. I'm from Chicago and traveling 15 miles is pretty much going from the far North Side to the far South Side, a trip that no one would make just for brunch. An analogous LA day in Chicago feels like it would be brunch in Schaumburg, coffee with a friend in Gary, Indiana and dinner in Winnetka. Maybe I'm way off, I was only there for three days, but that was what I took away from the trip.
- flat6turbo 10y agoif you constantly travel while in LA, you're going to feel like you're constantly traveling.
- nkrisc 10y agoMaybe I wasn't clear enough: my impression of LA is that what is considered a "normal" commute/travel time there is actually quite large and more that what might be considered normal in other cities.
- flat6turbo 10y agoresidents don't cross the county 3-4x in a single day, only visitors do. it's not normal.
- SippinLean 10y agoMeasurably false, LA has the worst traffic in the world. >The average [LA] driver wasted 104 hours sitting in gridlock.... New York motorists spent 89 hours on average...San Francisco...83 hours on average in 2016. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/02/20/los-angeles-new-york-and-san-francisco-most-congested-us-cities/98133702/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/02/20/los-angeles-n...
- zymhan 10y agoYou then proceed to list only US cities to back up your claim, disregading GP's point that other countries have much, much worse traffic in their biggest cities.
- SippinLean 10y ago>in the world The article mentions Moscow as the second-worst city for traffic
- MSM 10y agoNot sure this is measuring the same thing. For example, if I moved to NYC I wouldn't even bother buying a car because the traffic is so bad. I'd spend 0 hours in gridlock per year, but the traffic is still terrible.
- SippinLean 10y agoNot if you're driving over a bridge during rush hour. There's plenty of gridlock in NYC. It's on this list. Owning a car in NYC is mostly prohibited by cost (including parking), vs taking the subway
- lightedman 10y ago"LA is a victim of having too good a car infrastructure" I live in the area. I guess you've not seen the potholes lining Ventura. The infrastructure, bridges included, are garbage.
- zymhan 10y agoNot the best maintained, but extremely extensive, is what they were going for
- lightedman 10y agoIf it were truly extensive we'd not have the constant traffic problems on the 5, 15, 10, 57, 71, and 134.