Big Suprise LA is #1 For Horrible Traffic (Newport Beach: buy, calculating)

[bayarea-girl]

INRIX National Traffic Scorecard

[buckeyenative01]

No sh*t!?

[Fontucky]

Excuse me while I pick myself up off the floor.

[bayarea-girl]

I'm just tired of people complaining about the traffic in their cities as I always have said no one beats LA traffic and of course they don't believe me when I say LA's traffic is NO JOKE!

[heatwave13]

Dang, that really sucks. I'd hate to deal with that crap day in-day out. When I visited L.A. area last year, I remember making a point NOT to even attempt to go into the city before 10:00 and I made sure I was back on the freeway to Newport Beach by 3:00.

[SurekRZA]

Id rather deal with L.A. traffic than drive around Manhattan. It took us a half our to go around one block because we had to make a U turn. Im also tired of people posting "LA has the worst traffic" threads.

[buckeyenative01]

Cars should be banned from Manhattan, period, unless they are used as some form of public service/transportation (delivery trucks, busses, cabs).

[killer2021]

I think Ca has such bad traffic is because of the geography. Everyone rushes up next to the ocean so the population density gets super high. In other countries the population density is even higher (20-30x that of LA) but those are mostly poor countries (china, india) so not everyone can buy a car. However in the states, everyone can buy a car even the poor.

If you ask me, anyone moving to CA should live within walking distance of their work. Commuting will make your life a living hell in CA.

[Jaymum]

My experience continues to tell me that the New York area is much worse. If you read the methodology for calculating a TTI, it mentions that it is the ratio of peak travel time to free-flow travel time. LA has higher speed limits than the New York area due in no small part to the ideal weather, wider, better engineered freeways, and newer infrastructure. Additionally, if you look at the full ranking chart, you can see that New York (second place in the most congested ranking) has more off-peak congestion. This, combined with lower speed limits, makes LA look bad in regards to the difference in speed between peak and off-peak hours. However, it is in no way an indication of how slow traffic moves over an extended stretch of road. Most segments analyzed are indeed, under a mile long. What's more, the #1 ranked bottle neck and 6 of the top 10 are in New York City. Only one of those top 10 are in LA (Hollywood Freeway at #7).

You have to read between the lines to see the full story.

[SandyCo]

Another option, other than living right next door to where you work, is to skew your work hours. For example, my 12-mile commute is a breeze but I have to be at work by 6:30 a.m.! I'm out at 2:30, so I miss most of the traffic going home, too.

I think L.A. has bad traffic because it's so spread out and people have gotten used to commuting long distances for work - over 50 miles one way!