People online always say you spend hours in traffic and “45 minutes to travel 5 miles.” When I checked Google Maps, the main highways are indeed jammed at around downtown LA, but the main roads seem fine, some worse some better. So couldn’t you in theory, be going faster if you go along the boulevards instead of the I-10 for example? From your experience, you say traffic is a lot better outside of downtown LA such as Diamond Bar or Santa Monica?
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No, traffic in LA is horrible. I live in Miami and it’s always been bad here, but LA was worse.
Nothing about LA traffic is exaggerated.
The last time I was in socal it took me an hour to go 2 miles (3.2km)
I wouldn’t even take my foot all the way off the brake before having to apply it again. Makes the leg tired
I used to live in LA. It’s not exaggerated.
I’m from L.A.
And no, they’re not!
I have done a fair amount of driving in LA and it is that bad. You can take side streets to get places faster but when traffic is bad even the side streets get jammed and it isn’t like they are secrets anyway. Nowadays with GPS there aren’t and “secrets” when it comes to rerouting to avoid traffic
It doesn’t get that bad all the time, but it’s no exaggeration.
Perhaps you checked at a non busy time.
Also, unless you checked the actual drive time between places, just looking won’t do much. Some streets were ok, but what about the streets around those? Driving the length of a single street isn’t a realistic commute.
If anything I think the amount of time it takes to park is not emphasized enough. Like you finally get to your destination 3 miles away after 40 minutes and then it can take another 30 to find parking and walk from there.
45 minutes to go 5 miles is not uncommon in the DC area, either. It all depends on which 5 miles and what time of day.
The highways weren’t bad but traffic within LA is horrible.
Diamond Bar is way way outside of what most folks would consider core LA (about 30 mi east of DTLA), although is still part of LA County. Traffic only gets bad heading there during rush hour. Now, heading to Santa Monica is just a horrible idea almost anytime other than the very early hours of the day since most of LA’s density happen to live around the 10 corridor between DTLA and Santa Monica and it’s the only freeway through mid-LA Basin to the beach. Any route paralleling close to the Wilshire Corridor and the Hollywood/Sunset Blvd corridor are always filled with people anytime of the day except for very late and very early hours.
Theoretically, it is faster to take the side streets if you get green light most of the way but even the side streets are also packed with cars.
A lot of things about Los Angeles and Los Angeles County are often exaggerated.
The stuff about traffic is not exaggerated, though.
Traffic never seemed that bad when I visited the LA region, but then I remind myself that I’m not commuting during rush hour.
I don’t think you can really exaggerate the traffic in LA… It is pretty annoying. I don’t think people are exaggerating about the 45 minutes to travel 5 miles, hell, it’s taken me 45 minutes to get to my exit on the 405 while I could see the exit like 200 feet in front of me.
The thing is, it’s not consistant, so it’s not ALWAYS an issue, but if you think it’s going to behave like other places with high traffic times being limited to rush hours, you will be wrong, crazy traffic happens out of the blue any time of the day, I’ve hit traffic at like 3 am in LA.
There are some ways around it, but it’s not as effective as it can be in other places. If it was, everyone would be doing it, and, then it wouldn’t work at all, which, is kind what happens.
I think what is exaggerated about LA is that it’s always going to be stuck in traffic no matter what and it’s always going to take you hours. That’s not how it works. I have plenty of examples of weird 3 am traffic, but I also have examples of flying through LA with no problems around rush hour times.
Diamond bar has a shit ton of stop lights. I don’t think you are getting through there super fast. I have actually tried this a few times without much avail. I did it because I was driving a manual transmission car and wanted to get out of the stop and go traffic to give my clutch leg a break. I’m really not an expert on Santa Monica, my sister lived there for a long time so she would have much better answers, I tend to avoid Santa Monica to be honest, doesn’t always work, but it’s a bit of a cluster fuck. If you aren’t used to places they can seem like a giant cluster fuck, since I don’t spend a ton of time in Newport but do have to go up there every once in a while I consider it the worst clusterfuck ever, fuck Newport.
I live in San Diego and not LA for a reason. One of which is traffic. The other is I don’t like being that close to family. Living here I can also use traffic as an excuse to not do family stuff.
No. I’ve visited LA on business a few times and, if anything, the traffic is under-exaggerated. It’s absurd how bad it is.