Several Los Angeles freeways end up on nation's worst bottleneck traffic list
LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- A study by American Highway Users Alliance, an advocacy group, found the nation's worst traffic bottlenecks and many spots in Los Angeles ended up on the list.
Chicago's Kennedy Expressway may have been the worst spot in terms of hours of delay, but nine spots in the Southland ended up in the top 15.
The worst place in Southern California for getting stuck in traffic is the 405 Freeway, right between the 22 and 605 freeways.
"It's only 4 miles long, but it takes a motorist an extra 114 minutes - that's almost 2 hours - to get through that area," said Greg Cohen with American Highway Users Alliance.
The latest rankings are based on backups in both directions throughout the day. According to the survey, the top 30 bottlenecks result in more than 90 million hours of lost time each year. The price of those delays to our economy comes out to nearly $2.5 billion a year.
"It's not simply a bottom line issue. It's a safety issue. It's an environmental issue. It's a stress issue and it's certainly a time consuming issue," said Bill Graves with the American Trucking Association.
It's that lost time that grates most people. A former Wyoming resident said spending so much time in traffic was surprising to him because it would never take that long in his home state.
