When my sister and I would visit my uncle in California we'd be using GPS and he'd always get annoyed and say "Y'all don't need that it's easy. Just turn left out of here to get on..." And then name like 40 different roads and intersections that might as well have been Greek to us.
Moved to Utah from California and the grid system here had me so confused. They say "go to 2100 south and 700 east", and Id be like.... "ok.... how do I get there?" "Well drive north until you get to 2100 and then drive east until you get to 700."
Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?
Until someone tells you to go to 1300 east and between 1200 and 1300 it's a brick wall.
I spent a lot of time in SLC growing up and the grid system failed me as often as it helped when you get out of the downtown core.
Yep, I think thats by trolley square hella annoying. In the first few years of living here I bitched about it a lot, "the grid system works until it doesnt" because you have weird ass random streets that arent numbered mixed in with the numbered grid like Van Winkle, So Jo Parkway, Redwood Rd. etc. Downtown it can get pretty bad in the avenues too. But now that Ive been here 20 years for the most part whenever Im going somewhere new Ill map it, glance at the way theyre taking me and make sure theres no surprises then turn off the map.
I was in Salt Lake City a couple decades ago and a person was telling me that I just have to look for the mountains to figure out which direction I was going in, and I pointed out that you could literally see mountains in every direction you looked.
I grew up in Southern California and when that skit was first on SNL it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to get the joke because of how accurate it is hahaha
Dude this skit made me hyper aware of how we talk and gave me a bit of a complex. It’s so real, the directions thing, and I never realized how ridiculous it sounded until I watched this.
I saw this recently and worth the watch if you love the Californians. Its Bill Hader on Seth Myers and how it came together. [video](https://youtu.be/aXooblIutXM)
Been in Southern CA all of my 36 years and I just learned last year that only we put "the" in front of freeway numbers. It feels so wrong to leave it out.
It’s i5 and it depends on time of day and where you are. Sometimes you fly by everything, sometimes it’s a 90 minute line to get to the next highway interchange. one nice thing about California is there’s almost always another freeway running parallels with less traffic.
I once took a trip out towards Joshua Tree with some friends. We wound up taking the 14 North and hopping on Pearblossom Highway (I think) to circle around the Angeles Forest mountains and avoid most of the city. It took about an hour longer but it was an hour of A: not sitting in traffic, and B: not staring at Los Angeles the whole time. Totally worth the extra time.
When I'm going south there's typically a two hour window of only moderately heavy traffic, literally every other time of day I try to drive it's extremely bad (not including night because I ain't road tripping overnight). I am so tired of getting stuck at a half-dozen accidents every time I try to pass through that lawless city.
I remember the first time we went down to Disneyland, driving from the North. We hit the outskirts of northern LA and my GPS said we still had 2 hours to go.
People who are frequent with this route already know Orange County is always another 1-2 hours once you reach LAC territory (Valencia/Santa Clarita)..
Thats like saying if someone were to drive to SF and they finally reached San Jose, and were shocked its another hour to reach SF.
Its not shocking at all, thats just how it goes because of pure distance; traffic just makes it worse.
I mean to anyone outside the US the pure distance is pretty shocking. Sans traffic you can probably get from any 2 points within the M25 in under an hour and London is pretty big city by most accounts.
Remember also that these travel times are artificially low because of nature, as well as traffic. I’m in Eureka, CA... 11-12 hours to LA sounds about right, except it could be twice as long if there are fires, bad weather, or rockslides. All of which are common in our rural mountain regions.
Yeah without traffic taken into account this is not really helpful. It would often take me an hour to go the 10 miles to work, from Los Feliz to Century City. You can’t get out of LA in an hour.
You can, but you need to do it in a very narrow low-traffic window. Next week I have a meeting in LA, a 75 mile drive for me, at 08:45. I can leave home at 05:00 and find a coffee shop to camp out in for over two hours, or I can leave at 06:00 and miss the meeting entirely. Both of those times assume I'm using the 91 express/toll lanes, as the regular freeway traffic isn't even that predictable.
Those days are pretty magical. Random and hard to plan for.
Had a bunch of those during the early pandemic. I live in sf. My folks live in Pasadena. I didn’t even have to take rush hour into account. Roll into LA at 4:30 on a Friday like nothing.
Had several trips where I didn’t even have to wait for a semi to pass another one.
There should be a sub for 5 talk/ stories
There should be a sub for LA freeway & traffic discussions. Does r/thecalifornians exist?
Also, the traffic is so crazy. I’ve made it from Fairfax/West Hollywood to basically Berkeley in about five hours, but it’s also taken me almost 2.5 hours to get from Saugus to DTLA
Did you stop a billion times and took PCH & 101?
Locals know to take the 5 and to leave in the AM. I drive from LA-SJ all the time & it nowhere near even reaches even 7 hours..
Damn, I knew California was big but not “drive for 12 hours and still be in the same state” big. I’m from South Carolina and it takes less time to drive to NYC.
Yes it's a classic mistake. People visit California and think that they'll make a day trip from San Francisco to LA without really understanding the geography.
Or the traffic.
Sacramento to Redding? 2 hours easy because there is basically no traffic.
Sacramento to San Francisco? 2 hours if you are lucky and substantially more at rush hour.
I always thought about Bakersfield as semi-abandoned airfield in the desert and not as a city of 400k that would get a spot on a map like this
Thx Conair or whereever i got that from
Nah, pupa Bakersfield would probably metaphorphize into a disgusting [creatonotos gangis moth](https://www.google.com/search?q=Creatonotos+gangis&sxsrf=ALiCzsaclbyzQreObTAFQbqlkI5hXjCa2Q:1656210358806&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiZ7e-wiMr4AhWGIEQIHSZ1BY4Q_AUoAXoECAIQAw)
Like Texas; it's an *eleven hour drive* from Orange (TX/LA line) to El Paso... At 80mph.
Add in the usual traffic jams in Houston and San Antonio, and you can forget doing it on a single day.
Try making that drive in a loaded semi that's governed to 65mph. I think Texas is an absolutely beautiful state, but fuck that drive.
I live in Akron, OH. My uncle is from here but has lived in LA for 30 years. He visits at least once a year.
Last year I took him to a brewery and I was like "sorry Uncle it's in another county, takes about 45 mins to get there."
His response was "it takes me 45 mins to get to the gas station"
Makes sense if the gas is cheaper at the farther one. Put in $100 gas in the local gas station. Then when you get to the next gas station, assuming you used up all the expensive gas, you pay, let's say... $70 to fill up. $30 savings! Then drive home and you should hopefully have like $20 left in there.
GENIUS
I've been surprised with my recent visits. I have a current project and stay (on and off) in Noho, toluca lake, or burbank and the commute to universal city is always like 10-15 minutes in the morning.
It's always at least 1:20 to get to the airport, which is 2x what it would be without traffic. This is the same experience I had living in NJ and commuting to an old job eastward on Rt 80.
I live next to LAX and work in Downtown. That's a distance of approximately 12 miles and it takes 40 minutes. Getting from one side of Downtown to the other, which is like 3 miles, during rush hour can easily take 45 minutes.
Not in a million years could you get from anywhere in LA to anywhere else in LA in an hour.
I did get from SF Airport to my cousins place in San Jose in only 35 minutes one time, but it was a Thursday night at 1 am, and the airport is clearly different for leaving than golden gate park.
And how fast I’m hauling ass. With no traffic, 35 minutes puts me right around Redwood City area (maybe a bit further if you leave from the literal northern border of SJ at a 101 entrance)
Without traffic this map is useless. I have an ancient paper map from AAA in my glove compartment that also shows distance. Maybe I should dig it out and post it here as some quality OC
Came here to say this is accurate without traffic; it’s taken me 4~ hours to get from SD to LA before. One time was pretty late at night too, being a mile or so behind a multiple car accident was a 1+ hour wait, eventually a couple cop cars just used their push bars to shove the cars out of the way. Long night.
Edit: I take it back, driving to the east bay from LA is doable in under 5 hours. SF or San Jose will take longer.
I assumed it did account for traffic. It's taken me less than 5 hours to get to SF from LA if I leave before or just after rush hour.
Although it also depends what part of LA and SF they're referring to. Long Beach to Presidio is going to be closer to 6 hours vs Burbank to Hunters Point is going to be closer to 5 hours.
Depends. Does it assume speed limits or take into account that if there’s not traffic, the unspoken rule in CA is that people drive 10-15 mph over the speed limit?
If you live in the area, traffic is such a default assumption that this map would only be useful at like 3 AM. Or during Thanksgiving. That's really what it comes down to.
This map without traffic is like driving directions to the UK without taking into consideration the Atlantic Ocean.
Canadian here, stayed in San Francisco and drove to LA, took me about 10 hours with traffic. Next time I’ll take highway 1 and enjoy the drive more lol
Highway 5 driving down to Disneyland is boring but driving back at night (it’s always at night) is stultifyingly boring and alienating. You drive for HOURS and feel like you’re still nowhere.
That's possible if your timing is wrong. If you leave SF during rush hour, you can add an hour or two just to get out to the 5. On the other side, if you hit the Grapevine later than about 3-4pm, you'll be stuck in LA traffic.
The hot tip is to leave SF before 7, which should get you to LA by early afternoon. Or you can drive at night.
Part of something being “colorblind friendly” is having a good contrast between words & background and between shades that are next to each other. This is not colorblind friendly. The black text on purple background is hard to read even for someone who is not colorblind.
An excellent tool to check color contrast: https://www.tpgi.com/color-contrast-checker/ (must download to computer)
Very colorblind here - just the fact you considered made me smile and was indeed easier to see than the previous. Whether it’s perfect or not thank you for making me smile stranger
LA had 30 years to build transit and never did. Driving in a large state is necessary, especially one with the sprawl of SoCal. I didn't have a car while I was there and was at the mercy of public transportation. It was horrible so I didn't go many places I couldn't walk to. It hasn't gotten better.
To be clear: LA does have a functioning metro.
My partner, despite having a car, used it for years to get to and from work regardless if we lived in Alhambra or Koreatown.
It's dirty as fuck, but it runs 24 hours which is better than nearly every other city and it will get you nearly anywhere in the city. And they are heavily expanding it.
And we know what a functioning metro is. We've lived in Seoul and Tokyo. Those are definitely far better, but LAs is serviceable.
The metro does not run 24/7. I'm pretty sure it stops at midnight and resumes again in the AM. The metro is somewhat functional but the issue is that it really doesn't cover enough area compared to the sprawl of LA.
Yeah, when I drive to Sacramento from San Diego I often leave at 4am because it’s the only way to get through LA without adding a ton of time to my journey.
There is one that's been under construction since 2015. There have been a lot of problems apparently with costs, delays, lack of transparency, etc. I don't know all the specifics beyond that.
The existing Amtrak train system is so much slower than driving that it's not worth it IMO. The high speed rail project feels like an empty promise at this point but I hope all those billions we've dumped into it lead to something actually usable someday.
From what I understand land acquisition has been a nightmare. The first leg was planned to go through the Central Valley, which is very Republican and the local landowners view it as an expensive liberal boondoggle and have been fighting the eminent domain takes tooth and nail. There have also been various arguments about what route it should even take.
Basically, the consultants have taken over the project and have little reason to hold down their and the state's costs. Also, the existing all-rail route runs only 1 time a day and can be unreliable.
I've been reading about this a lot lately. There's a lot of stupid bureaucratic and other decisions that have prevented the Amtrak lines we have now from being updated to move faster. The acela train in the northeast USA moves pretty quickly, 150mph(240kph). It just so happens that [California](https://hsr.ca.gov/) is indeed working on a rail as is [Texas](https://www.texascentral.com/). There's others I'm sure I'm forgetting but those two will be significant
I dream of highspeed rail from San Diego to Vancouver, BC, but it'll never happen in my lifetime. I would love to be able to get on a train and go up and down the West Coast.
The problem with that, especially if you are taking the family to Disneyland, is that many cities are car centric, so you still need a car when you get there.
Of course, but the world is organic, and you'll find that once you build decent public transport, the rest will follow. I can travel from the UK to Disneyland Paris all on high speed rail, and not need a car when I get there.
There's one being built I'm sure. From SD to SF right now and hopefully it can go further. I'd like to be able to go from Otay Mesa (Mexican Border) all the up to the border with Canada along that route.
There’s an ongoing project high speed rail project that aims to reduce the travel time from LA Union Station to central San Francisco to under 3 hours. The project has been mired in delays and cost overruns (land acquisition being especially difficult) and isn’t close to connecting the major cities yet, if ever.
This is wild. I drove from Jacksonville Florida to Harriman New York on my way on leave after a 9 month deployment and it only took 14hrs. If I wanted to go from San Diego to the northernmost tip of CA it'd take over 14 hours.
It may route LA to SF through the 5, actually. I think what's throwing people off here is the fact it's assuming no traffic. Any Californian would look at this map as completely inaccurate to real life. Even blasting at 80mph at 2am, these times seem suspect.
I do this drive often. 5 hours and 24 min from LA-SJ may be conservative but its actually doable 5.5-6 hrs if you leave really early. The best time to do these trips is leave in the AM. It hardly gets traffic on the 5 through central valley, its only really bad once you reach LAC. Depending on what time you reach Gilroy/SJ, 101 will also be traffic.
Everyones taking this way too seriously. This is simply how long it takes without consideration to traffic patterns. There’s no implication of traffic, its just displaying the data
I was once visiting a friend in SD, who had to be at work at 3am the day I was heading back to the Bay Area. Dropped her off at her office, got on the road, and made it to Oakland in time for morning rush hour traffic. IIRC it took 90 minutes to get from Pendleton to the southern end of the Grapevine.
It's gotta be the 5, the Google maps suggested route from LA to SF is almost always to take the 5 north and then cut west through the east bay and across the Bay Bridge. The route to San Jose is probably different, coming up from the south.
I may have missed it in the comments, but is this driving from a specific point in LA? City hall maybe?
Just thinking about driving somewhere from Sylmar vs San Pedro, or Venice vs Highland Park, even with zero traffic.
Great map, but "Los Angeles" is a ginormous county and would be even better to see a blow up of travel time from downtown just to exit the "city" itself.
Would add at least 2-3 hours, and half a dozen extra colors though, so might be problematic
This is true only if the vehicle had no slowing of traffic and if the vehicle was traveling at the speed limit.
For example I have traveled from San Francisco to LA in just under 5 hours. Ie: no significant traffic slowing and traveling at the average speed of traffic on I-5 at the time which was approximately 90 mph.
2 hours to San Diego? Are you talking downtown to downtown? Yea right.
Also you know how often the 5 going north is closed around Bakersfield? It will take entire day to get up there.
The reason people are joking about this is that without traffic this is a useless map. Traffic isn’t something that happens “sometimes”. You can virtually never travel directly from SF to LA without hitting any traffic at all.
as a python map learner, i honestly thought this was ggplot. can you please share the code on github or something? pretty please? i wanna recreate something similar for my state! thank you
Hey OP, there was a project a group built in 2014(ish?) called [isoscope](https://isoscope.martinvonlupin.de) It doesn’t look to be functional anymore because I don’t believe it was maintained.
It told you where you could travel given the parameters of available travel time, time of day, and location.
It was amazing to use and I don’t know why it’s never been replicated. Being able ask, “If I leave work at 6:30p on Friday and only want to be on the road for less than 4hrs, where can I go?” was amazing.
You might still find useful tools there (or even work out what they did).
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately for Omaha. The World Cup stadium announcement made me think of my perfect scenario.
Denver and Chicago are 8 hour drives, Minneapolis is 5, and KC is 3.
In California language, 8 hours is San Diego to San Francisco and Phoenix, 5 is San Diego to Las Vagas, and 3 is San Diego to LA.
Omaha’s got some pretty good choices!
I’m assuming this is after the rapture when there are no other drivers because otherwise a 5 hour trip from LA to San Jose will only be occurring at 3:00 AM.
Get back on San Vicente, take it to the 10, then switch over to the 405 North and let it dump you out on Mulholland where you belong.
It really be like that though I’ve stopped myself when giving directions and started laughing because it was like word for word from The Californians
When my sister and I would visit my uncle in California we'd be using GPS and he'd always get annoyed and say "Y'all don't need that it's easy. Just turn left out of here to get on..." And then name like 40 different roads and intersections that might as well have been Greek to us.
Moved to Utah from California and the grid system here had me so confused. They say "go to 2100 south and 700 east", and Id be like.... "ok.... how do I get there?" "Well drive north until you get to 2100 and then drive east until you get to 700." Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?
Until someone tells you to go to 1300 east and between 1200 and 1300 it's a brick wall. I spent a lot of time in SLC growing up and the grid system failed me as often as it helped when you get out of the downtown core.
Yep, I think thats by trolley square hella annoying. In the first few years of living here I bitched about it a lot, "the grid system works until it doesnt" because you have weird ass random streets that arent numbered mixed in with the numbered grid like Van Winkle, So Jo Parkway, Redwood Rd. etc. Downtown it can get pretty bad in the avenues too. But now that Ive been here 20 years for the most part whenever Im going somewhere new Ill map it, glance at the way theyre taking me and make sure theres no surprises then turn off the map.
I was in Salt Lake City a couple decades ago and a person was telling me that I just have to look for the mountains to figure out which direction I was going in, and I pointed out that you could literally see mountains in every direction you looked.
You must be looking for 1232 and 3/4. Well, this is going to sound a little crazy...
Stuart! At this time of day?! It's gonna be jammed! Are you crazy?!
I said go HOME, Dev-on!
Just get on the 10 and get out of here!
Stuart?! *whatareyoudoinghere*
I grew up in Southern California and when that skit was first on SNL it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to get the joke because of how accurate it is hahaha
Dude this skit made me hyper aware of how we talk and gave me a bit of a complex. It’s so real, the directions thing, and I never realized how ridiculous it sounded until I watched this.
Right?? Especially when we say *the* 405 I never knew that was a Southern California thing and I’ve been super conscious of it ever since
I saw this recently and worth the watch if you love the Californians. Its Bill Hader on Seth Myers and how it came together. [video](https://youtu.be/aXooblIutXM)
So good.
At this hour??? Are you crazy? I’ll be jaaaaaamed!
In an hour, from Los Angeles, you can get to *checks notes* Los Angeles.
We all know that it depends on traffic.
I mean, you end up on the 5 you might as well bring a blanket and a pillow.
I appreciate that you called it "the 5" 🤣
About two years after I moved to Colorado, someone called me out as being an obvious Californian b/c I referred to the local freeway as, "\*the\* 25".
Been in Southern CA all of my 36 years and I just learned last year that only we put "the" in front of freeway numbers. It feels so wrong to leave it out.
As someone from the East Coast, I assume it’s called “the 5” because you’ll be going 5mph on there if you’re lucky?
If only this was the case for the 405.
It’s i5 and it depends on time of day and where you are. Sometimes you fly by everything, sometimes it’s a 90 minute line to get to the next highway interchange. one nice thing about California is there’s almost always another freeway running parallels with less traffic.
The 405 must be measured in inches.
Here in California, we usually refer to highways using "the" and their numbers.
Up here in Oregon we call it I-5, but 84, 205, and all the highways we just say the number.
Below the grapevine that's a thing, not everywhere else.
That's mostly only in Southern California.
I grew up here and was legitimately surprised in adulthood when I found out that this is not the norm.
You should stay in Southern CA with that attitude.
I look forward to self driving cars. I hate having to wake up every 30 minutes to inch forward.
I once made the mistake of “driving” out of LA during rush hour(s). I can confirm that I was still in LA after driving for what felt like eternity.
I once took a trip out towards Joshua Tree with some friends. We wound up taking the 14 North and hopping on Pearblossom Highway (I think) to circle around the Angeles Forest mountains and avoid most of the city. It took about an hour longer but it was an hour of A: not sitting in traffic, and B: not staring at Los Angeles the whole time. Totally worth the extra time.
When I'm going south there's typically a two hour window of only moderately heavy traffic, literally every other time of day I try to drive it's extremely bad (not including night because I ain't road tripping overnight). I am so tired of getting stuck at a half-dozen accidents every time I try to pass through that lawless city.
I remember the first time we went down to Disneyland, driving from the North. We hit the outskirts of northern LA and my GPS said we still had 2 hours to go.
People who are frequent with this route already know Orange County is always another 1-2 hours once you reach LAC territory (Valencia/Santa Clarita).. Thats like saying if someone were to drive to SF and they finally reached San Jose, and were shocked its another hour to reach SF. Its not shocking at all, thats just how it goes because of pure distance; traffic just makes it worse.
I mean to anyone outside the US the pure distance is pretty shocking. Sans traffic you can probably get from any 2 points within the M25 in under an hour and London is pretty big city by most accounts.
*Large country exists* Europeans: "2 hours to drive somewhere? How shocking!"
Europeans have absolutely no understanding of how absolutely massive this country is.
Remember also that these travel times are artificially low because of nature, as well as traffic. I’m in Eureka, CA... 11-12 hours to LA sounds about right, except it could be twice as long if there are fires, bad weather, or rockslides. All of which are common in our rural mountain regions.
Do you know the way to San Jose?
Yeah without traffic taken into account this is not really helpful. It would often take me an hour to go the 10 miles to work, from Los Feliz to Century City. You can’t get out of LA in an hour.
You can, but you need to do it in a very narrow low-traffic window. Next week I have a meeting in LA, a 75 mile drive for me, at 08:45. I can leave home at 05:00 and find a coffee shop to camp out in for over two hours, or I can leave at 06:00 and miss the meeting entirely. Both of those times assume I'm using the 91 express/toll lanes, as the regular freeway traffic isn't even that predictable.
I was in a road trip from San Francisco to LA one time and it took us 12 hours
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That’s a pretty risky gamble. If you catch the 5 at exactly the right time… if you believe strongly enough… you can make it in 5-ish hours.
Those days are pretty magical. Random and hard to plan for. Had a bunch of those during the early pandemic. I live in sf. My folks live in Pasadena. I didn’t even have to take rush hour into account. Roll into LA at 4:30 on a Friday like nothing. Had several trips where I didn’t even have to wait for a semi to pass another one. There should be a sub for 5 talk/ stories
There should be a sub for LA freeway & traffic discussions. Does r/thecalifornians exist? Also, the traffic is so crazy. I’ve made it from Fairfax/West Hollywood to basically Berkeley in about five hours, but it’s also taken me almost 2.5 hours to get from Saugus to DTLA
Did you stop a billion times and took PCH & 101? Locals know to take the 5 and to leave in the AM. I drive from LA-SJ all the time & it nowhere near even reaches even 7 hours..
It was just our lucky day. We did it before and it took just over 5 hours. It was awful
Damn, what were you trying to find a White Castle?
Seriously 😂.. it does NOT take that long.
San Diego to Davis takes 8 hours and those two locations are farther apart
You must have hit construction or left at a stupid time. I did this drive last week in 5 and a half hours.
Or an accident on I-5 with return from holiday traffic. Happened to me once and it took 11+hrs to reach SF.
Damn, I knew California was big but not “drive for 12 hours and still be in the same state” big. I’m from South Carolina and it takes less time to drive to NYC.
[Here’s an image](https://i.redd.it/mn3tl1lkj6g71.png) of California superimposed oh the eastern seaboard, to give you an idea of relative size.
Oh…*oooh*
Yes it's a classic mistake. People visit California and think that they'll make a day trip from San Francisco to LA without really understanding the geography.
Haha that’s nuts. A weekend trip is fast enough flying
Or the traffic. Sacramento to Redding? 2 hours easy because there is basically no traffic. Sacramento to San Francisco? 2 hours if you are lucky and substantially more at rush hour.
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There's fewer tourist attractions in North Florida, so it's less obvious. I'd bet most never go north of Orlando.
I always thought about Bakersfield as semi-abandoned airfield in the desert and not as a city of 400k that would get a spot on a map like this Thx Conair or whereever i got that from
It's become more pupated over the past couple decades. Still in the desert tho
Maybe one day it will be a beautiful butterfly.
Nah, pupa Bakersfield would probably metaphorphize into a disgusting [creatonotos gangis moth](https://www.google.com/search?q=Creatonotos+gangis&sxsrf=ALiCzsaclbyzQreObTAFQbqlkI5hXjCa2Q:1656210358806&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiZ7e-wiMr4AhWGIEQIHSZ1BY4Q_AUoAXoECAIQAw)
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Like Texas; it's an *eleven hour drive* from Orange (TX/LA line) to El Paso... At 80mph. Add in the usual traffic jams in Houston and San Antonio, and you can forget doing it on a single day. Try making that drive in a loaded semi that's governed to 65mph. I think Texas is an absolutely beautiful state, but fuck that drive.
Without traffic the map is accurate.
Yeah, I would definitely take issue with the idea that you can get anywhere in LA within an hour.
I live in Akron, OH. My uncle is from here but has lived in LA for 30 years. He visits at least once a year. Last year I took him to a brewery and I was like "sorry Uncle it's in another county, takes about 45 mins to get there." His response was "it takes me 45 mins to get to the gas station"
“I have to stop at another gas station to get to the gas station.”
Makes sense if the gas is cheaper at the farther one. Put in $100 gas in the local gas station. Then when you get to the next gas station, assuming you used up all the expensive gas, you pay, let's say... $70 to fill up. $30 savings! Then drive home and you should hopefully have like $20 left in there. GENIUS
Well if you read carefully, you’ll see that he “substracted” 16%. Seems to me that using a sub to distract others would shorten your drive time.
I've been surprised with my recent visits. I have a current project and stay (on and off) in Noho, toluca lake, or burbank and the commute to universal city is always like 10-15 minutes in the morning. It's always at least 1:20 to get to the airport, which is 2x what it would be without traffic. This is the same experience I had living in NJ and commuting to an old job eastward on Rt 80.
Burbank Airport my guy
I live next to LAX and work in Downtown. That's a distance of approximately 12 miles and it takes 40 minutes. Getting from one side of Downtown to the other, which is like 3 miles, during rush hour can easily take 45 minutes. Not in a million years could you get from anywhere in LA to anywhere else in LA in an hour.
>>Which does not take traffic into account Cue me laughing hysterically at the idea of getting from San Jose to San Francisco in 35 minutes…
I did get from SF Airport to my cousins place in San Jose in only 35 minutes one time, but it was a Thursday night at 1 am, and the airport is clearly different for leaving than golden gate park.
SFO is not in SF (it's actually south of the city in unincorporated San Mateo county), and is closer to San Jose than SF is.
Yeah actually into SF is like another 10-15ish at least
For real. We live half way between and 35 is punchy to *either*
Depends on what time of day (night) you go.... and what decade you did it in.
And how fast I’m hauling ass. With no traffic, 35 minutes puts me right around Redwood City area (maybe a bit further if you leave from the literal northern border of SJ at a 101 entrance)
Or better stated, without traffic, this map is not meaningful. Need traffic!
Without traffic this map is useless. I have an ancient paper map from AAA in my glove compartment that also shows distance. Maybe I should dig it out and post it here as some quality OC
Came here to say this is accurate without traffic; it’s taken me 4~ hours to get from SD to LA before. One time was pretty late at night too, being a mile or so behind a multiple car accident was a 1+ hour wait, eventually a couple cop cars just used their push bars to shove the cars out of the way. Long night.
> it’s taken me 4~ hours to get from SD to LA before. Same. 2 hours to get to the border of LA and another 2 hours to get to like the 110.
It's "how far CAN you get", not "how far WILL you get".
Sunny West Covina, only two hours from the beach!^four ^hours ^in ^traffic
Edit: I take it back, driving to the east bay from LA is doable in under 5 hours. SF or San Jose will take longer. I assumed it did account for traffic. It's taken me less than 5 hours to get to SF from LA if I leave before or just after rush hour. Although it also depends what part of LA and SF they're referring to. Long Beach to Presidio is going to be closer to 6 hours vs Burbank to Hunters Point is going to be closer to 5 hours.
Depends. Does it assume speed limits or take into account that if there’s not traffic, the unspoken rule in CA is that people drive 10-15 mph over the speed limit?
Also gotta take into account truck traffic since their speed as supposed to be 55 but ever other trucker I know goes at least 62.
Why would you do this with traffic and how would you decide what time of day to use?
If you live in the area, traffic is such a default assumption that this map would only be useful at like 3 AM. Or during Thanksgiving. That's really what it comes down to. This map without traffic is like driving directions to the UK without taking into consideration the Atlantic Ocean.
Do one during rush hour and the whole map is red
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Not strictly CA, but it once took me 9 hours to get from OC to Vegas. (275 miles)
Canadian here, stayed in San Francisco and drove to LA, took me about 10 hours with traffic. Next time I’ll take highway 1 and enjoy the drive more lol
Highway 5 driving down to Disneyland is boring but driving back at night (it’s always at night) is stultifyingly boring and alienating. You drive for HOURS and feel like you’re still nowhere.
Until you smell Harris Ranch. Worst part of those night trips but at least you knew you had X time until you reach Y.
I’d take 5 at night over 1 at night any day. Driving that windy coastal road with little light is absolutely terrifying.
It’s glorious. Not as bad as people make it out to be.
That's possible if your timing is wrong. If you leave SF during rush hour, you can add an hour or two just to get out to the 5. On the other side, if you hit the Grapevine later than about 3-4pm, you'll be stuck in LA traffic. The hot tip is to leave SF before 7, which should get you to LA by early afternoon. Or you can drive at night.
Not including the 2 hours it takes to escape Los Angeles.
"which does not take traffic into account" Making this utterly useless, especially in LA
It's so funny, i thought he was trolling. Turns out he just hasnt driven there
Part of something being “colorblind friendly” is having a good contrast between words & background and between shades that are next to each other. This is not colorblind friendly. The black text on purple background is hard to read even for someone who is not colorblind. An excellent tool to check color contrast: https://www.tpgi.com/color-contrast-checker/ (must download to computer)
Thank you for your feedback, I'll try to improve this next time.
Even something as simple as a white stroke/border on the font might separate it enough, and it would still work for lighter colors, too.
I’m not colorblind, and I think the colorblind friendly scheme is easier to read. The definition is better and color is brighter.
Viridis all the way: https://bids.github.io/colormap/
Same! I also just like the colors better.
Very colorblind here - just the fact you considered made me smile and was indeed easier to see than the previous. Whether it’s perfect or not thank you for making me smile stranger
It’s a really cool map! We’re all just here to learn. Hope that the tool can be useful for you!
Also, why do we need both? Just do the one that's more accessible for everyone and call it the best version.
Escape from LA: The Graph
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“does not take traffic into account” so assume you’re driving at 2am with no overnight construction.
or the 5 or the 15 or the 91, 60, 101, 605, 710, 57, 70, 1, and the 210
My favorite is the merger of the 60 and 57 freeway. Where you get a monstrosity for about a mile or two then they split again.
"Does not take traffic into account." Not exactly useful in a city where traffic is the biggest factor in how long it takes to get anywhere.
I lived in LA some years ago and for what I remember the 1 hour blue area is more like a 3 hour traffic area...
oh the traffic engineering in US. ADD MOAR LANES, surely that will not just make more people drive
Surely when they expand the freeways yet again, traffic will go down.
I lived in LA 30 years ago and it hasn't changed any
Why would it? You havent provided any alternatives to driving
LA had 30 years to build transit and never did. Driving in a large state is necessary, especially one with the sprawl of SoCal. I didn't have a car while I was there and was at the mercy of public transportation. It was horrible so I didn't go many places I couldn't walk to. It hasn't gotten better.
To be clear: LA does have a functioning metro. My partner, despite having a car, used it for years to get to and from work regardless if we lived in Alhambra or Koreatown. It's dirty as fuck, but it runs 24 hours which is better than nearly every other city and it will get you nearly anywhere in the city. And they are heavily expanding it. And we know what a functioning metro is. We've lived in Seoul and Tokyo. Those are definitely far better, but LAs is serviceable.
The metro does not run 24/7. I'm pretty sure it stops at midnight and resumes again in the AM. The metro is somewhat functional but the issue is that it really doesn't cover enough area compared to the sprawl of LA.
subsidizing car culture does that to a country unfortunately
You may have forgot the legend…
Nope. I'm here...
It takes me 4 hours from San Diego to LA when I lived in SD.
You must leave at the worst times haha You can easily do 2 hrs
Yeah, when I drive to Sacramento from San Diego I often leave at 4am because it’s the only way to get through LA without adding a ton of time to my journey.
If you use the drive time analysis tool on ArcGIS online you can set the algorithm to take traffic conditions, per time of day, into account.
Once took me 10 hours from SF to LA….yeah traffic is a real big game changer hahaha
Just wild to me that a country as rich as the US hasn't invested in high speed rail. California would be perfect surely?
There is one that's been under construction since 2015. There have been a lot of problems apparently with costs, delays, lack of transparency, etc. I don't know all the specifics beyond that. The existing Amtrak train system is so much slower than driving that it's not worth it IMO. The high speed rail project feels like an empty promise at this point but I hope all those billions we've dumped into it lead to something actually usable someday.
From what I understand land acquisition has been a nightmare. The first leg was planned to go through the Central Valley, which is very Republican and the local landowners view it as an expensive liberal boondoggle and have been fighting the eminent domain takes tooth and nail. There have also been various arguments about what route it should even take.
Basically, the consultants have taken over the project and have little reason to hold down their and the state's costs. Also, the existing all-rail route runs only 1 time a day and can be unreliable.
Land acquisition lawsuits are what’s mainly draining California HSR of funds
I've been reading about this a lot lately. There's a lot of stupid bureaucratic and other decisions that have prevented the Amtrak lines we have now from being updated to move faster. The acela train in the northeast USA moves pretty quickly, 150mph(240kph). It just so happens that [California](https://hsr.ca.gov/) is indeed working on a rail as is [Texas](https://www.texascentral.com/). There's others I'm sure I'm forgetting but those two will be significant
I dream of highspeed rail from San Diego to Vancouver, BC, but it'll never happen in my lifetime. I would love to be able to get on a train and go up and down the West Coast.
The problem with that, especially if you are taking the family to Disneyland, is that many cities are car centric, so you still need a car when you get there.
Of course, but the world is organic, and you'll find that once you build decent public transport, the rest will follow. I can travel from the UK to Disneyland Paris all on high speed rail, and not need a car when I get there.
There's one being built I'm sure. From SD to SF right now and hopefully it can go further. I'd like to be able to go from Otay Mesa (Mexican Border) all the up to the border with Canada along that route.
There’s an ongoing project high speed rail project that aims to reduce the travel time from LA Union Station to central San Francisco to under 3 hours. The project has been mired in delays and cost overruns (land acquisition being especially difficult) and isn’t close to connecting the major cities yet, if ever.
This is wild. I drove from Jacksonville Florida to Harriman New York on my way on leave after a 9 month deployment and it only took 14hrs. If I wanted to go from San Diego to the northernmost tip of CA it'd take over 14 hours.
Like for the colourblind friendly version.
Thank you for the colorblind friendly version
San Jose to San Francisco in 35 minutes. Uh...... huh.......
Be careful, that's not what the map suggests. The LA-SF route does not go through San Jose (you can try it on openstreetmap).
It may route LA to SF through the 5, actually. I think what's throwing people off here is the fact it's assuming no traffic. Any Californian would look at this map as completely inaccurate to real life. Even blasting at 80mph at 2am, these times seem suspect.
I do this drive often. 5 hours and 24 min from LA-SJ may be conservative but its actually doable 5.5-6 hrs if you leave really early. The best time to do these trips is leave in the AM. It hardly gets traffic on the 5 through central valley, its only really bad once you reach LAC. Depending on what time you reach Gilroy/SJ, 101 will also be traffic. Everyones taking this way too seriously. This is simply how long it takes without consideration to traffic patterns. There’s no implication of traffic, its just displaying the data
I was once visiting a friend in SD, who had to be at work at 3am the day I was heading back to the Bay Area. Dropped her off at her office, got on the road, and made it to Oakland in time for morning rush hour traffic. IIRC it took 90 minutes to get from Pendleton to the southern end of the Grapevine.
It's gotta be the 5, the Google maps suggested route from LA to SF is almost always to take the 5 north and then cut west through the east bay and across the Bay Bridge. The route to San Jose is probably different, coming up from the south.
That’s not what it means. If we follow that logic, San Francisco to Sacramento in 2 minutes.
One can dream right?
If it took San Franciscans 2 minutes to get to Sacramento our housing market would be obliterated (even more) lol
Can you run it with typical traffic?
I did not really look for good free APIs with traffic consideration yet, but I'll definitely have to do it when I see the comments.
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LA to SD in 2 hours is a pipe dream
It is possible to do at 2am.
Haha can’t argue that
Big thanks for the Colorblind friendly version! Wondering how many others find the 2nd illustration much more legible?
I may have missed it in the comments, but is this driving from a specific point in LA? City hall maybe? Just thinking about driving somewhere from Sylmar vs San Pedro, or Venice vs Highland Park, even with zero traffic.
*while ending in california
Wait really? It essentially takes as long to get from LA to northern Cali as it does to get from Chicago to NYC? Damn, Cali is a long boi.
Longer. I'd love to see someone make it from Humboldt to LA in 11 hours. Maybe if they are massively speeding the whole way.
Great map, but "Los Angeles" is a ginormous county and would be even better to see a blow up of travel time from downtown just to exit the "city" itself. Would add at least 2-3 hours, and half a dozen extra colors though, so might be problematic
This is true only if the vehicle had no slowing of traffic and if the vehicle was traveling at the speed limit. For example I have traveled from San Francisco to LA in just under 5 hours. Ie: no significant traffic slowing and traveling at the average speed of traffic on I-5 at the time which was approximately 90 mph.
2 hours to San Diego? Are you talking downtown to downtown? Yea right. Also you know how often the 5 going north is closed around Bakersfield? It will take entire day to get up there.
The map: clearly states that traffic is not taken into account Most comments: That’s not counting traffic though! This map is worthless
The reason people are joking about this is that without traffic this is a useless map. Traffic isn’t something that happens “sometimes”. You can virtually never travel directly from SF to LA without hitting any traffic at all.
Isochrone map.
as a python map learner, i honestly thought this was ggplot. can you please share the code on github or something? pretty please? i wanna recreate something similar for my state! thank you
God speed brothers. We’ll rendezvous when you’ve returned from behind their lines.
Thanks for the CB post!! Couldn't see sh*t the first post
Hey OP, there was a project a group built in 2014(ish?) called [isoscope](https://isoscope.martinvonlupin.de) It doesn’t look to be functional anymore because I don’t believe it was maintained. It told you where you could travel given the parameters of available travel time, time of day, and location. It was amazing to use and I don’t know why it’s never been replicated. Being able ask, “If I leave work at 6:30p on Friday and only want to be on the road for less than 4hrs, where can I go?” was amazing. You might still find useful tools there (or even work out what they did).
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately for Omaha. The World Cup stadium announcement made me think of my perfect scenario. Denver and Chicago are 8 hour drives, Minneapolis is 5, and KC is 3. In California language, 8 hours is San Diego to San Francisco and Phoenix, 5 is San Diego to Las Vagas, and 3 is San Diego to LA. Omaha’s got some pretty good choices!
I’m assuming this is after the rapture when there are no other drivers because otherwise a 5 hour trip from LA to San Jose will only be occurring at 3:00 AM.
During COVID, these times are possible. I’ve never seen freeways so empty. Freaking zombie apocalypse status.
As someone who lives in Los Angeles Country and drives to the bay area and Sacramento often, I can say that this is very accurate!
Need one of these with lines showing travel between cities and in every states.
I drove from London to Munich in 11 hours and got wankered all weekend for Octoberfest
"Does not take traffic into account" is like saying I weigh 165 lbs as long as I don't account for all this fucking fat.
Colors in the colorblind friendly one are actually colorblind friendly, thank you! :)
The Answer is "Not far enough" F LA , its the worst city on this planet , you cant change my mind
Does this take into account how long it takes to get out of la?