Surprisingly, LA traffic isn’t as bad as we think—these cities have it worse

Los Angeles is surprisingly not living up to its reputation for having the worst traffic in the world.

There are numerous measures for traffic and LA is not the worst in almost all of them.

Inrix, one of the world’s foremost leaders in transportation data and insights, releases an annual scorecard, and in the latest edition, LA dropped from 8th to 10th.

“Geography has a lot to do with congestion, how many alternate routes do you have,” Nat Gale, Inrix’s Head of Product, said. “In Southern California, we are blessed with a lot of options.”

On the Inrix scorecard, Los Angeles is behind three other US cities: New York, Chicago and Philadelphia.

“Some of those other cities are seeing their congestion numbers and hours lost increase over time, whereas in LA, we are staying pretty consistent,” Gale said. “I do think there’s a positive story there around ways in which we are managing our congestion.”

Gale credited LA for finding at least one effective tool to curb traffic … money.

“We’ve had Express Lanes for almost a decade,” he said. “What happened is, when you apply a price to a particular trip, people started making different choices.” 

Jay Beeber, the Executive Director of Policy for the National Motorists Association, shared his data with the California Post, showing the average New Yorker wastes 125 hours per year sitting in traffic compared to 83 for Angelenos. 

New York’s average speed during congestion is also lower, at 10 MPH compared to 17 MPH in LA.

“Over 60% of trips in the LA area are on highways,” Craig Smith, map-maker TomTom’s Director of Enterprise, told the Post. “New York has just 34%, creating more gridlock.”

TomTom has a measurement known as the travel time index, which is the percentage of extra time required to travel during rush hour compared with uncongested times of the day. In that, Los Angeles is No. 1.

That said, Angelenos should not be complaining, according to Beeber.

“Traffic overall is a sign of economic activity, people are out doing stuff,” he said. “So maybe it’s time people learn to love the traffic.” 

Watch the latest episode of California Post’s series “Everything They Say About L.A. Is A Lie” on the link above to learn more about the misconceptions around traffic in Los Angeles.

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