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I’ll Take “Los Angeles Traffic” for $200, Alex

Photo by dogwelder/Flickr

Over at Freakonomics, Eric Morris is running a quiz that should delight, surprise, and cause no small amount of debate among transpo types. He’s already answered one of the questions, but I’ve linked to the original quiz post, which I’ll reproduce below as well:

We at U.C.L.A. hear from reporters a lot, and they are often looking for a few quotes to help write a familiar script. In it, Los Angeles is cast in the role of the nation’s transportation dystopia: a sprawling, smog-choked, auto-obsessed spaghetti bowl of freeways which meander from one bland suburban destination to the next. The heroes of the picture are cities like San Francisco, or especially New York, which are said to have created vastly more livable urban forms based on density and mass transit.

But this stereotype is as trite and clichéd as any that has spewed from the printer of the most dim-witted Hollywood hack. And it is just as fictitious. The secret is that Los Angeles doesn’t fit the role it’s been typecast in.

I have not yet been granted authorization to distribute the coveted Freakonomics schwag, but challenge yourself with the following quiz anyway.

Exactly one of the following statements about transportation in Los Angeles is indisputably true. Two are (at best) half-truths, and the rest are flat-out myths. Can you figure out which of the following is accurate?

1. Los Angeles has developed in a low-density, sprawling pattern.

2. Los Angeles’s air is choked with smog.

3. Angelenos spend more time stuck in traffic than any other drivers in the nation.

4. Thanks to the great distances between far-flung destinations, and perhaps to Angelenos’ famed “love affair” with the car, Angelenos drive considerably more miles than most Americans.

5. Los Angeles is dominated by an overbuilt freeway system that promotes autodependence.

6. Los Angeles’s mass transit system is underdeveloped and inadequate.

Answers to follow over the next few weeks.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 3:39 pm and is filed under Cities, Congestion, Roads, Traffic Culture, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “I’ll Take “Los Angeles Traffic” for $200, Alex”

  1. Yogi Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 9:26 pm

    Well, as a current Angeleno, I’ll take a shot:

    1. Los Angeles has developed in a low-density, sprawling pattern.
    Basically true, if you consider that ‘Los Angeles” is usually taken to mean everything from Pasadena to Santa Monica, and Irvine to Ventura. If you mean the actual city itself, not true.

    2. Los Angeles’s air is choked with smog.
    Again, with the caveat of LA meaning the entire Basin, sure seems true.

    3. Angelenos spend more time stuck in traffic than any other drivers in the nation.
    Don’t think so: Chicago? NY? DC?
    4. Thanks to the great distances between far-flung destinations, and perhaps to Angelenos’ famed “love affair” with the car, Angelenos drive considerably more miles than most Americans.
    Again, could be how it’s written: lots of Angelenos don’t have a car.
    Overall, I don’t think so.
    5. Los Angeles is dominated by an overbuilt freeway system that promotes autodependence.
    No-one who lives here would call the freeways “overbuilt”. But, if i don’t live downtown, the car is a total neccessity, unless i want to spend the day on Metro. I grew up in Rome, IT and NYC and would gladly use transit, but from Pasadena to anywhere it’s not realistic unless you have to. So 1/2 true?
    6. Los Angeles’s mass transit system is underdeveloped and inadequate. I vote yes. But I include the whole basin as a regional issue, not just downtown, where transit is actually adequate.

    Can’t wait to see the “actual” results.

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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

Please send tips, news, research papers, links, photos (bad road signs, outrageous bumper stickers, spectacularly awful acts of driving or parking or anything traffic-related), or ideas for my Slate.com Transport column to me at: info@howwedrive.com.

For publicity inquiries, please contact Kate Runde at Vintage: krunde@randomhouse.com.

For editorial inquiries, please contact Zoe Pagnamenta at The Zoe Pagnamenta Agency: zoe@zpagency.com.

For speaking engagement inquiries, please contact
Jenna Meulemans at the Knopf Speaker Bureau.

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