Yesterday, I made the mistake of thinking I only needed an hour to drive 11 miles in Los Angeles — and arrived 20 minutes late for my interview with Colin Beavan about No Impact Man. If I were making the trip today, I would’ve planned my day differently — because the just-released INRIX National Traffic Scorecard special report shows Los Angeles to be the most traffic congested market in the country — again.
Traffic congestion’s actually gone down in most of the country — but went up by 4% in the L.A. area in the first half of 2009. The worst intersection? Hollywood Freeway approaching Vermont Ave. The worst time to be on the road? Thursday, 5 – 6 p.m.
But apparently, driving surface streets on a Monday at 3:20 pm doesn’t move me so fast, either. And while taking the bus would certainly have been more eco-friendly, my trip would’ve taken me even longer than the 80 minutes driving took me. My future travel hopes rest with getting the Subway to the Sea built out as quickly as possible. If it were running now, I could have made it from Santa Monica to the Hollywood and Highland station for the interview in under a half hour!
I do feel incredibly lucky that most days, I don’t have to get in the car at all. Yet we’ve created an unlucky situation for ourselves — So much happens in our city that we can’t readily enjoy because we’re cut off from each other by gridlock, by the car-dependent city we’ve created.
So Angelenos — and especially Westsiders — Join the Metro Westside Subway Extension Facebook group and get involved. And if you’re curious about what the top 10 most horrible intersections in Los Angeles are, check out the INRIX National Traffic Scorcard for more details.
Earlier: Masochism and westside traffic
Photo by andropolis
One of the most compelling FTW reasons why I’ve bike commuted some 80% of my workdays over this past two years between Silver Lake and Westchester is that getting to/from work by bike adds only 10-20 minutes to my travel time over the same surface street route in my truck. Using a freeway route involving the 101/110/10/405 in my truck has actually proven to be 15-30 minutes slower than my bike on the streets.
Comment by Will Campbell — September 1, 2009 @ 12:34 pm
Ack, my bus home cruises around the Hollywood fwy/Vermont area so I can personally confirm this traffic wretchedness.
Comment by Rosemary — September 1, 2009 @ 7:51 pm
Siel — Thanks for the mention of the ongoing Subway work and our Facebook group. I hope everyone joins up for this and the many other ongoing Metro efforts — Crenshaw, Wilshrie BRT, Regional Connector, etc. — to provide more mobility options for greater Los Angeles.
Jody Litvak
Metro Westside Subway Extension Team
Comment by Jody Litvak — September 2, 2009 @ 8:56 am
Siel,
I am so sorry to hear about your long cross-town trip. What a bummer! Today, it took me 80 minutes to get from Downtown from a meeting at Metro via transit back to UCLA in the middle of the day. That’s pretty typical, I suppose. Don’t get me wrong – I’m grateful for our subway and the 720 – but let’s face it: There are a lot of cars on our streets, and let me tell you, it will be sweeet to improve connectivity between downtown and the Westside. I know that it is much harder – and time consuming – to remain connected to the policy things that are related to my work because a lot of the conversations take place downtown. We should chat soon about some of Denny Zane/MoveLA’s efforts to advocate for a National Infrastructure Bank. It’s pretty brainy but the idea is to advocate for a funding source that can act as a bank to front the costs of major infrastructure projects… it’d help accelerate the time table of some major transportation projects, like Expo, Subway to the Sea, and so on. I still have lots to learn about it though.
Comment by Sirinya Tritipeskul — September 2, 2009 @ 5:04 pm
Will — I wish I were as intrepid a cyclist as you are….
Sirinya — Funding really is a v. pressing issue — since projections had the Subway to the Sea getting to Westwood not until 2032 in the absence of more funding. Villaraigosa did promise he’d try to speed up the time table — We need to make sure he and other politicians actually work on this.
Comment by Siel — September 2, 2009 @ 5:15 pm