How Much LA Traffic Costs You

A report on nationwide traffic from the Texas Transportation Institute notes that Los Angeles has the worst traffic in the nation and that Angelenos wasted 70 hours sitting in traffic last year, a figure that's down from the 72 hours from 2006. The study, which looked in traffic patterns in 439 U.S. urban areas from 1982 through 2007, notes that nationwide, congestion dropped for the first time in 2007, a move which can partially be attributed to rising fuel reports, according to the Wall Street Journal . You can see all the data for Western cities via this link; Los Angeles was lumped in with Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana. In terms of more specific information, people in the LA-area wasted 336 million gallons of fuel in 2007 because of traffic delays. Looking at individual costs, each driver wasted a total of $1,480 because of traffic delays, according to Bernie Fette, research specialist at the Texas Transportation Institute. (Compare that cost to the tax hike of Measure R, which is estimated to cost Los Angeles County residents $25 a year). Sadly, the study didn't look at whether all that muscle-atrophying traffic was killing our sex drive, which some unhappy readers have claimed. [Texas Transportation]