L.A.'s Tricky Traffic
You know the worst part about L.A. Traffic? No, it's not that it always sucks. It's that it sometimes sucks, at least for me...
See, if it always sucked, then I'd simply resign myself to knowing that it always sucks and never plan on making any kind of normal time between point A and point B. But instead, it can vary from REALLY sucking to being not bad at all. For instance, I drove in this morning and my normally 65-minute commute took just under two hours. I should have expected it with the rain, but even so it seemed worse than (rain) normal -- yet I never saw why (I never passed an accident, mud slide, etc.). Then, tonight, I left work expecting the worst (it was still raining, and I left at 6:30, which is well within "rush hour" in L.A.), yet it only took me 55 minutes to get home and everything went great!
I'm not complaining about the short commute tonight, but I must admit that more consistency, even consistent suckiness, would almost be better because I'd never have any other expectation. Still, as L.A. commuting goes, I have it pretty good. My commute takes between 55 and 75 minutes at least 90 percent of the time, and a 20-minute swing over a 47-mile commute in L.A. (whether rush hour or not) is almost unheard of. I know people who live 35 miles away and their commute swings from 45 minutes to two hours all depending on just time on day (that's before you throw in weather, construction, etc.)
Get a bicycle, Karl. ;)
Well, I'm not in that good of shape. But every time I'm stuck in traffic I have visions of being on my 1975 Triumph Trident.
I live only five miles away from work in L.A. In the morning I take the freeway and get here in twenty minutes. But at day's end, the freeway is impassible so I take the side streets. That's a real gamble every day as to which one is moving faster, and it usually takes me twice as long to get home as it did to get to work. Still, I consider myself lucky because overall my commute isn't that long. I've done the longer commutes, and my motto is "Never Again."
ugh! I commute from 40 miles away. it is BRUTAL! like Karl said, it's SOMETIMES tricky. Here's my noticeable trend:
Mon-Tues = light in the morning (545am). it takes me roughly 35 minutes to get to work. moderate in the afternoon (4pm). this takes me about 1 hr. and 15 minutes to get home- and that's if you can catch the "waves" of which lanes are moving.
Wed-Thurs = moderate in the morning; which translates to about an hour commute. HEAVY in the afternoon. 1 hr. and 45 minutes if i'm lucky.
Fri. = light in the morning and well, FORGET IT in the afternoon. it seems that traffic starts @ 1pm and doesn't let up until 9pm! where did all these people come from!?!
I second and third your description track. Exactly the pattern I've noticed. Most days I have minimal swing in my commute time, but if I don't get out of the office before 4 p.m. on Friday afternoons (3 p.m. in the summer) I might as well stay at work until 9 p.m. -- because I'll get home at about the same time!!
I'm not sure what your route is, but I'm always using PCH, and the Friday afternoon "Escape from L.A." crowd (as I've come to call them) simply loads up PCH northbound as they all scurry to Santa Barbara and points beyond. Double Ugh!!
is it just me, or does any little incident distract all of these people??? i mean, it's like that lame elementary mentality of chanting, "fight, fight, fight" and then all of these people start crowding around and slowing down, watching, ogling.... and what exactly were they watching? a tow truck picking up a pinto. i mean, i know a pinto is RARE (harsh sarcasm) and a broken down pinto is even more SCARCE (yet even more sarcastic), but c'mon people, i have better places to be than stuck on the 10E going 2 mph!!!
When I first arrived in S. Calif in 1980, the San Diego Freeway was driveable most of the time except for peak rush hour. That freeway, in many sections, is now a 24 hour parking lot.
It's told we'll have 5-10 million more people here in 10-20 years (Antelope valley gets 1.5 million). 40-60,000 new houses will be in the Santa Clarita valley (just north of San Fernando Vally) in about 5 years or so. One result: Traffic on the I_5 and I_14 connection is predicted to DOUBLE in 10 years.
Meanwhile the cars get bigger and faster and closer and closer together on those freeways.
Can you say "The Perfect storm"?
I'm in the SF Bay Area, and this is my first year working. I have a question for more experienced commuters out there:
Why did Daylight Savings screw up traffic so badly? Is it just here, or everywhere? I see more slowdowns in the morning, and more fast, empty stretches too. In the evening (5:30-7), traffic seems to have doubled. What's going on!?
Karl: I live near Wilshire and La Cienega and worked in downtown L.A. for about twenty years. My solution to the traffic problem was to hop on the bus and let the bus driver worry about the traffic.
I had nearly door-to-door service and read the newspaper going to work, and sometimes slept on the way home.
Several of my co-workers also had access to convenient bus service, but most of them refused to ride a bus. They fought the traffic and paid for very expensive parking, even though the employer would have reimbursed them for most of the cost of a monthly bus pass.
The cars I owned during that period had very low mileage for their ages.
It often takes me about 25 - 30 minutes to get from the Beverly Center to Santa Monica in the morning (8 miles) and upwards of 1 to 1.5 hours to go the other direction in the evening.