Traffic in LA Is Both Terrible and Kind Of Weird

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Well, it looks like Trump and Clinton are winning just about everything tonight. But you didn’t need me to tell you that. My job is to distract you from the horror show that has become the 2016 presidential primary. So let’s talk about traffic.

For the millionth year in a row, Inrix announced today that Los Angeles has the worst traffic in the nation.1 This isn’t really news, but I did notice something odd about the rankings. Take a look at the table below:

These are the ten worst stretches of highway in the country, and they’re found, unsurprisingly, in our three largest cities. But in Chicago and New York City, the most rage-inducing time of the week on these extended parking lots is Friday. In LA, it’s mostly Tuesday and Wednesday; Friday takes the top spot in only one out of six. Why is that? Please leave your guesses in comments.

1But not the worst anywhere: London beats Los Angeles by a wide margin. And if Inrix collected data for Africa and Asia, I’ll bet no US city would even make the top 100.

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Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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