Survive the Drive in California
To Beat Freeway Traffic in Los Angeles, the Answer is Buy the Book
Jan 28, 2009
It's a bold man who can claim to tell you how to beat the freeway traffic in Southern California, the most grid-locked place in the nation, but if anyone can it has to be someone called Dr Roadmap. David Rizzo, to give him his regular name, is a one-time commuter columnist for several newspapers in Southern California, a frequent radio traffic reporter, wrote the map/book Freeway Alternates, and for some light relief invented the board game Road Rage!!!
Los Angeles Traffic
So how bad is the traffic in Southern California? Well, the facts tell the story – as bad as it gets. Los Angeles is the worst place in the nation for traffic jams, followed by, not New York but the San Francisco and Oakland area. Drivers are more likely to get stuck in traffic driving from LA to Disneyland as through the heart of New York. The average Los Angeles motorist spends an average of 93 hours per year going nowhere. That's almost three working weeks, sitting behind the wheel at zero miles per hour. In Los Angeles and Orange County motorists waste over 400 million gallons of gas every year just sitting in traffic jams.
How to Beat the Traffic
The author explains that in order to know how to beat the traffic, drivers have to understand it. He does it in a surprisingly entertaining and readable way. One page he's quoting the French writer and philosopher Voltaire, a few chapters later he's interviewing the Los Angeles County Assistant Chief Coroner. (Don't panic, as relatively few deaths happen on LA's roads. Fatalities usually require fast-moving traffic. That's the good news.)
Four Simple Jam-Busting Rules
Dr Roadmap gives four rules to help you avoid wasting gas and spending too long sitting still:
- Continuously monitor traffic conditions by listening to traffic reports and not the new Bruce Springsteen album.
- Plan your escape in advance: always know the next exit and which lane to be in to reach it.
- Resist the need to speed: the fast lane is usually the last lane to be in, and reducing the average speed usually reduces the length of delays.
- Stay observant, and be ready to exit the freeway at the first sign of a snarl-up ahead.
The sections most regular LA drivers will turn to will be those on mastering alternate routes, and the maps at the back which give variations to help avoid some of the major freeways. Anyone taking the same freeway regularly will benefit hugely from knowing how else to drive the same route: plan your escape in advance.
There's much more to Survive the Drive! than just escaping the jams. Dr Roadmap gives much other driving advice, such as how to avoid being carjacked, what to do about tailgating, and how best to drive in different weather conditions.
If Survive the Drive! helps drivers stop wasting even a few gallons of gas every year from sitting still as a statue on the LA freeways then it's a sound investment – and the planet will benefit too.
Further Information
Survive the Drive! is available on Amazon and other online retailers and from book stores in the Southern California area. It costs $14.95. For more information visit the Dr Roadmap website.
*
 |
