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Los Angeles has seen more than its share of problems in the past few years.
But when it comes to one of the things that drives citizens crazy, there are signs of little improvement.
New data shows that the home of Carmgeddon, Sigalert and Road Rage saw the best traffic.
Los Angeles was the 10th-most congested city in the world by 2025, according to the Global Traffic Scorecard from inrix, a traffic analysis company. It’s not exactly something to brag about, but LA was eighth — the most combined in 2024.
Compared to other major cities in the US, LA’s traffic is the fourth, after Chicago, New York City and Philadelphia, to get a credit card.
Throughout the 2010s and mid-2010s, La consistently ranked as having the worst traffic congestion anywhere in the world.
So what happened? Experts show several opinions:
- It also reworked travel habits up through the Coving epidemic
- Controversies continue for Downtown Los Angeles, where office vacancies remain high
- LA’s of course the most notorious congestion, which has long been so great that it’s easy for conditions to get a little better than worse.
That doesn’t mean La drivers have had it easy, though. By 2025, the average Angelino driver will still spend 87 hours — three full days — sitting on the road, up from 88 hours a year ago, according to the report.
It’s not surprising
Flattened or declining numbers were the persistent surprises of continuing to work at home in the Post-Panchemic Era, said Michael Manville, a professor of urban planning at UCLA.
And, he added, “Things have been pretty good” traffic-wise in LA, which means it’s harder for things to get worse than arguably better.
“It’s nothing new that we occasionally go up on a perch,” said Maville.
He pointed out that a 1% year-on-year decrease in congestion – a change noted in the Inrix ScoreCard – is likely to have passengers.
“The average person in Los Angeles knows that traffic is bad and causes a lot of problems downriver,” he said.
Downtown la struggler
Downtown is the hub of the Frawling Freeway Network. But the area hasn’t been a prominent business district for sprawl in Southern California for decades, and the pandemic has led to vacancies.
A report released earlier this year found the average vacancy rate in downtown offices to be around 34%, with full occupancy at 37%. That was an improvement from last year but still a problem, experts said at the time. In contrast, the vacancy rate for year-olds was only 13%, the report noted.
There has been growing support for converting some passive towers into lofts in homes and condos, but that is an expensive and cumbersome process.
Indeed, the Inrix Traffic Scorecard found that Downtown La sees less car traffic than the landfills of other major cities. One factor that may have increased LA’s ranking in the report was speed. In Downtown La, the average car speed was 17 mph, the fastest of the 10 most congested cities in the world, according to Inix.
The combo of remote work and empty buildings in the city will mean fewer commuters creating gridlock, but also fewer clients for local businesses.
Manville said other urban areas in America have more population density and a greater contrast in vulnerability to surrounding pastures. LA, however, has a balanced range of invasive species that are slowly clustered across hundreds of miles.
“It’s not really crazy in any area to really support public transportation,” he said of the south side, “but it’s just some bad congestion.”
That traffic carries a cost – not in terms of time. Traffic delays cost the average LA driver $1,602 by 2025, the report says.
Combined over the entire city, the total figure was $8.6 billion. Only the city of New York, with $ 9.7 billion, we saw the highest costs within the US delay calculated by the difference between the speed in the middle of the night and the normal speed at Peak Rush Hour in each city.
“The most interesting takeaway was the absence of growth (and recession) in the slowdown in other major metros,” the report said. “More investigation is needed into the cause, including demographic changes, travel patterns and car ownership patterns, as well as other economic and demographic factors.”
If Los Angeles wants to continue to curb congestion, reducing speed limits could help, a study in the report showed.
The report highlighted two examples in Santa Monica where lower speed limits have reduced heavy traffic: Colorado Avenue between Ocean Avenue and 17th Street between Lincoln Boulevard and 19th Street.
Although it may seem counterintuitive, reducing speed limits in mixed conditions can actually lead to smoother road travel and less stop/go traffic, according to the Global Alliance of Global
On Colorado Avenue, the observed walking speed remained the same as the limits fell, while on Michigan Avenue Speed The report concluded that congestion on Colorado Avenue caused speeds to fall below even the revised speed limit. On Michigan Avenue, speeding dropped from 6% of vehicles to 1%.
