>Having lived in both places, I can say that LA/Orange County is
>definitely worse.
I've lived in both too and though I agree it's worse down here the difference is not as much as people think (see below).
>Automobile wise, there are places in LA City and in the Orange Crush
>that are congested almost throughout the day until after 8 or 9.
You can avoid a lot of this with a little effort and imagination. And 8 or 9 is a stretch, unless there's a ballgame in town or something.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/09/19/MNBQS8JV0.DTL&type=printable
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Bay Area traffic congestion isn't getting any better. But the good news, if you can call it that, is that it's getting worse at a slower pace than in most of the nation's metropolises, according to a national transportation study released Tuesday.
Both the San Francisco and San Jose metropolitan areas ranked in the top 10 most-congested urban areas, according to the annual report from the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. San Francisco ranked second in hours each driver spends sitting in traffic above and beyond normal driving time; San Jose ranked eighth.
[.....]
Because the report compiles data that measure congestion in a variety of ways, the rankings vary by category - except that Los Angeles is No. 1 in each.
In other measures of congestion, the Bay Area also ranked near the top: Second in wasted fuel per driver (behind Los Angeles) with San Jose ninth, and third behind Los Angeles and New York, with San Jose in 11th, when commute hour traffic was compared to free-flowing traffic.
According to the report, drivers in the San Francisco area wasted 47 gallons of fuel a year sitting in gridlock, and San Jose drivers used an extra 38 gallons - the national average. Los Angeles motorists wasted 57 gallons.
A comparison between the time a trip takes during the commute slog and free-flowing traffic found that San Francisco commuters see their driving times increase by 41 percent; it's 50 percent in Los Angeles. San Jose drivers saw their trip times slow by 34 percent during the commute.
Four California metropolitan areas ranked among the nation's 10 most congested. In addition to Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose, San Diego ranked high - sixth - with 57 hours of annual delay.
"If you're in California," Rentschler said, "you're suffering."