March 20, 2020

Here’s What California Traffic Looks Like on Lockdown

This is the 405 at rush hour today, taken from the Sand Canyon overpass. This particular stretch of the freeway is normally a parking lot at this time of day:

And here’s Sand Canyon itself, looking north from the overpass. This is not a road that’s normally jammed to its teeth at rush hour, but it usually has a whole lot more than two cars plus a bicyclist.

And here’s a traffic map of the entire LA/Orange County basin:

It looks like compliance with the lockdown is pretty good. That gives me a little bit of hope that we might actually still have time to flatten the outbreak curve a bit.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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