The Texas Transportation Institute says that the place I live now, Los Angeles, and that I lived just before LA, Washington, have the worst traffic in the country (they actually rank one and two), where worst is defined as average minutes spent in bad traffic per day.
Today was a bad day in LA--it rained, and people just don't know how to deal with that here. But for some reason, I found commuting by car in DC to be far more frustrating. In both cities, the distance between my home and office was about the same. As it happens, I hated driving in DC so much that I took Metro to work nearly every day, and the total Metro commute was about 50 minutes one way (including walking). On the other hand, the walk from my house to the Bethesda Metro station and from Dupont Circle to my office in Foggy Bottom was quite pleasant.
But back to the point--somehow driving in LA seems far less stressful to me than driving in Washington. Maybe it's just that the radio stations are better....
