Mapping Los Angeles’ notorious traffic problem

Story highlights Los Angeles is one of the most congested cities in the United States Skeptics doubt whether expanding local transport systems will ease congestion CNN — Los Angeles is probably as famous for its traffic congestion as it is for the iconic Hollywood Sign. Despite the planned expansion of the Los Angeles Metro Rail system, and the popularity of “walkable communities” such as Playa Vista in the Westside and the beachfront neighborhood of Santa Monica, LA’s congestion levels are still among the worst in the world. “It’s portrayed in media and movies as a city of sunshine and palm trees, and tracts of single-family houses stretching off into the horizon – when actually, as an urbanized area, it’s the densest in the country, more so than New York.” The root of the problem Drivers in LA spent, on average, over 102 hours in traffic at peak times in 2017, according to transportation analytics firm Inrix – that’s the most time drivers spent in rush-hour jams in any city in the world. “Los Angeles and Southern California, in general, have relatively poor transit services,” says Michael G McNally, a professor at the Institute of Transport Studies at the University of California, Irvine. In LA, development densities are high for the entire region – essentially a flat surface where most of a very large area is equally dense, and thus equally congested.” The high cost of parking, combined with the wide-reaching, 24-hour public transit system in New York limits car ownership there, McNally adds.