If I leave my house before 7:30 or after 9, I get to USC in 15-20 minutes. I used transit today--it took 70 minutes to get to work, and an hour to get home tonight.
In DC, the trade-off was a 40 minute drive against 50 minutes door-to-door with metro/walking. That was a good trade--the ten extra minutes were small price to pay for the exercise, the ability to read/listen to music on the train, and the opportunity to avoid DC drivers. But a 40-50 minute difference is a whole different story. And LA radio is good, and the drivers are better here.
Yes, this is the problem practically everywhere, and not only in the US. It is less true in dominantly monocentric cities for trips to the CBD. Anyone knows a good comparative study of trip times with transit and car for a number of cities?
ReplyDeleteDuatreb:
ReplyDeleteCheck out the Texas Transportation Institute's Urban Mobility Study from 2007. Here's the URL: http://mobility.tamu.edu/ums/
Is it safe to say we had an automotive bubble that stifled saner forms of transportation?
ReplyDeleteAnd what the heck is going on in Los Angeles lately? I drove all over the city this week and it seemed like we had twice the normal congestion. A couple of days can be explained by the fires up north that pushed traffic south, but...