[QUOTE=Rigamarole]
Johnny L.A., I have a question you’re the perfect person to answer (though anyone who knows both L.A. and Seattle can answer if they want). Many posters have mentioned the traffic being bad. How bad is “bad” compared to L.A. traffic?
(I’m particularly curious because Seattle is a place I have considered relocating to)
[/QUOTE]
In L.A. I lived on the West Side. My normal commute was the 405 south to the 22 to near The Block (formerly The City). Traffic was generally good before LAX, packed up a bit passing LAX, and was generally good again, slow at the South Bay Curve, decent to the 22 (noting that just past the 22 the 405 appeared to come to a screeching halt – which I discovered when I lived there last year), good for about five miles on the 22, and then packed to the Fairview exit. Fortunatly I usually road a motorcycle so I could use the HOV lanes and could split lanes.
Up here traffic is good down to Everett, where it gets rather slow. There’s a short section after people get off at the 405, and then it backs up again for the rest of the trip. I get off at 273 for the park-and-ride and take the bus downtown.
In L.A. I had alternatives. If I heard traffic would be bad on the 405/22, I could take the 405 to the 105 to the 605 to the 91 to the 5 and get off at City Drive. Or I could take the 10 to the 5 and get off at City (only I hate the 5 – very rutted and the lanes seem narrower near downtown). If things were really bad on the way home I could get off at Sepulveda/PCH. It’s (usually, in the circumstances) actually slower than just staying on the freeway, but at least I’d be moving.
I haven’t discovered if there are alternate routes in Seattle. L.A. is spread out; Seattle is wedged between some Lake Washington/small mountains/hills and Puget Sound. On the way home from the Northgate P&R traffic is slow to at least Everett, and sometimes to Marysville. The weather is often not amenable to motorcycling, and lane-splitting is not permitted here in any case. In L.A. people tend to drive fast, and IME (not not in the experience of some others on SDMB) slower traffic will often move over. Here there are a lot more cops (State Patrol) who pull over a lot of cars, people tend to drive at or below the speed limit, and they generally will not move over to allow faster traffic to pass. As I mentioned in another thread a few weeks ago, I have not heard the phrase ‘fast lane’ up here. The ‘Slower Traffic Keep Right’ signs may as well not exist.
So I would say that due to the (apparent) lack of alternate routes, the geography, the number of cops, the tendency of drivers to not speed, the self-appointed pace cars (i.e., people not moving over for faster traffic), plus the tendency for people to slow down for things that seem incredibly minor compared to L.A. (gawker’s block), Seattle traffic is worse than L.A.
On the other hand public transportation is excellent. My bus runs every four to eight minutes, it’s clean, and has a stop just four blocks from the office. Parking downtown is around $10-$12/day (‘early bird’ rate at the lots) vs free parking at the P&R. My bus pass costs $54/month, but the non-profit I work for pays $45 of it. So my bus pass for a month costs me about the same as parking for one day.
Not too big, not too small, a million things to see and do. Good hospitals. I wouldn’t move out of here if you paid me.