Los Angeles area driving.. how bad is it? (Anaheim, Irvine: construction, living)

[melissabecker22]

Seriously the driving is crazy especially on umm well all freeways. The 405 from Valley Vista to the 10 freeway has had construction going on for like 3 years it is by far one of the heavy traffic areas. There is a service called Zoom Errands (zoomerrands.com) that I actually use when I can't deal with the traffic. I get to stay home and they get to run my errands for me haa! I am counting the days to when I can get out of this city and go to my dream town of where 1 stoplight exists. I need some country roads LA traffic is too insane no matter what time of day!

[ccm123]

Having lived in SoCal for 20+ years and having traveled to many major metropolitan areas all over the country and world, LA is one of the worst cities for traffic (DC is also very bad, San Francisco itself is also bad, Bangkok Thailand is also horrible, etc). It is not only the fact that the traffic is bad, but the area has a lot of urban sprawl which result in long commutes and the reactions of some of the drivers (e.g. road rage behaviors) only make the problem worse. Many of the drivers are also angry in their cars because of the traffic, so they take it out on other drivers.

[bpeeps]

Originally Posted by MordinSolus

The traffic is blown way out of proportion. At rush hour a good number of streets are annoyingly slow, but most streets never get very bad and when it isn't rush hour you won't notice the traffic unless you're full of road rage. The traffic in NYC is MUCH worse but LA has gotten the label of having the worst traffic. I think people just need to have a knock against LA to have have something to complain about.

Wrong.

Originally Posted by nightlysparrow

Agree completely, even with the midwest part. What I do like is that in L.A. most of the streets and freeway lanes are pretty wide. In some other cities I feel like the other cars are practically side-swiping me.

Wrong.

Originally Posted by mbell75

Yea, I mean all those scientific studies with actual facts and figures proving LA is the worst city in the US for traffic are meaningless right?!


10 American Cities With the Worst Traffic - TIME
Top 10 Worst Cities for Traffic
TomTom's 10 worst traffic cities - Kelley Blue Book

etc...

Thank you! I basically came to say this exact same thing. Oh my anecdotal information from driving in a different city one time as a tourist is totally factually correct over studies that were done using GPS, mapping, congestion data, traffic cameras and real-world time data. Seriously, LA has the worst traffic in the nation. Any article you Google will provide the facts.

[GoldCountry80]

Well if all those stats say it, it must be true. I don't think the media can be making it up if each and every report has L.A at number one. Coincidentally the top 5 at least has 3 California cities in it.

[timtemtym]

Originally Posted by Patrolman

Having patrolled the streets of L.A. for 40 years, L.A. traffic is no worse than any other metropolitan city. I recently came back from a trip in the midwest and was astounded at the traffic in such cities as Milwaukee, Chicago, and Minneapolis-St. Paul. What got my attention the most was in the twin cities. Pedestrians completely ignore traffic signals and walk into traffic whenever they feel like it. I though I was in NYC.

I have friends who visited LA for business from the Minneapolis suburbs. Their first day here they told me they got a verbal warning for jaywalking in downtown Long Beach. They were shocked and couldn't believe that was an actual law. That was last year when we had that really bad batch of pedestrians getting hit every week or two. I can't imagine that it is safe to just walk out into the streets in Minneapolis.

[ragnarkar]

They say if you can drive here (LA, OC, and IE) then you can pretty much drive anywhere in the lower 48 states except NYC..

[MordinSolus]

Originally Posted by mbell75

Yea, I mean all those scientific studies with actual facts and figures proving LA is the worst city in the US for traffic are meaningless right?!


10 American Cities With the Worst Traffic - TIME
Top 10 Worst Cities for Traffic
TomTom's 10 worst traffic cities - Kelley Blue Book

etc...

Yeah, because that tells the whole story.

In other major cities the traffic is lessened by a higher percentage of people taking public transportation every day. But in those cities it takes MUCH longer to get anywhere that way and it isn't sensible to own a car if you aren't loaded. NYC, for example, falls into this category. It takes longer to travel shorter distances by car, and several times longer to get anywhere via public transit. For example, right now in NYC it would take me an hour or longer to travel the 14 miles from Manhattan to the Bronx by car.

[azdr0710]

I live in Phoenix and Tucson and find the drivers in LA to be much better than Arizona, generally....though number of vehicles and speeds are high in LA on both surface streets and the highways, there's a sense of "we're all in this together" and, therefore, everybody helps each other out....LA drivers wait for pedestrians, stop quickly at yellow-turning-red lights, and usually travel at the same rate as others.....the occasional speed-demon weaving thru traffic appears, but is easy to avoid and ignore....

here in Arizona, traffic hasn't gotten to crisis levels yet, so drivers still feel they can be somewhat independent (!)...plus the wide variety of recent transplants (with the accompanying variety of driving styles from "back home") leads to incongruous traffic patterns here....

possibly the "worst traffic in the country" lists that LA is on only comes from the sheer number of cars on the road and not the quality of the drivers??

[dexter14]

Originally Posted by MordinSolus

Yeah, because that tells the whole story.

In other major cities the traffic is lessened by a higher percentage of people taking public transportation every day. But in those cities it takes MUCH longer to get anywhere that way and it isn't sensible to own a car if you aren't loaded. NYC, for example, falls into this category. It takes longer to travel shorter distances by car, and several times longer to get anywhere via public transit. For example, right now in NYC it would take me an hour or longer to travel the 14 miles from Manhattan to the Bronx by car.

...and it takes my friend 1hr 10min on average to go 15 miles from his job by the Spectrum in Irvine to his home here in Anaheim, and thats OC, not LA. So whats your point? Every study you look at agrees LA has the worst traffic in the country. Find just ONE that doesn't. We'll be waiting....

[Teckeeee]

It's the worst I have seen, add motorcycles splitting lanes at freeway speed at dead stop, just nuts.