On Vaction

LA Freeways

We've been on a mini-vacation last couple of days. This has entailed driving to Southern California, the part that's on the opposite side of Los Angeles, meaning that we had to drive directly through L.A.. Today, we spent the day in San Diego, driving about. Just some quick observations:

1. Driving through L.A. was not nearly as bad as driving through other cities, like I-80 through Salt Lake City, I-94 through Gary, Indiana, or the Schuykill Expressway in Philadelphia. There may be a lot of traffic in L.A., but the roads are good and easy to follow.

 2. That said, you can see more of Salt Lake City, Gary, and Philadelphia from the road because the air doesn't get in the way as much.

3. I-5 south of the L.A. on the way to San Diego is a very nice road. It has excellent car pool lanes. There are 'car pool lane only' exits to the left so you don't have to merge all the way back across the freeway to get to your exit on the right.

4. At least when we went through, by and large people respected the car pool lane, and if they didn't have two or more in the car, they stayed out of the car pool lane. Drivers in the Bay Area, who seem to consider the car pool lane as just one more lane, could take a few lessons.

5. There are a lot of highways down here, and for the most part they're in good condition. I don't know the numbers, but I would like to see if there is any kind of fairness to the distribution of highway monies between the south and the north. Of course, maybe Caltrans is reluctant to spend any more on Northern California than they have to until we all start obeying the rules in the car pool lanes.