Los Angeles highways (from Feb. 12 and 13)

I thought I'd post some "leftover" photos that I took in Los Angeles but never got around to posting.  Here are some shots of the famous L.A. freeways.  Note that I was a passenger for these- I would never take photos while driving on these roads!  These are from mid-February, on my way to the bike rides in Long Beach and the San Gabriel river.  There are lots of major highways in L.A., this is just a couple of them.

This is the 110, heading south.  Very wide, it's got carpool lanes to the left.  To be in a carpool lane in L.A., the threshold is almost always just two passengers.  Traffic is moving well though so we're not in them yet.

 

This is the interchange on the 110 for traffic heading to the LAX airport.  I think there's a bus stop somewhere in there in the middle (seriously).  I find it interesting that they call their airport "LAX", after it's aviation I.D. (whatever that's called).  It's like if we called Ottawa airport "YOW".

 

This is the 10, one of the east-west highways, the major one I guess, it's an interstate that goes all the way across the country, the most southerly one.  We're heading east here.   It's quite pretty with the snow-capped mountains in front of us.  Note however how close you drive to the rather crunchy walls- there is NO shoulder on either the right or the left of the road here.  Absolutely no room for error either in the left hand lane (or right hand one for that matter) if you drift a bit... you hit concrete instantly if you do.  This carpool lane on the 10 scares the hell out of me.  I like a bit of a safety margin built into my roads.

  

Some interchange on the 10, forget which one.

  

This is the 6-something in eastern L.A., heading towards the San Gabriel mountains.  The road ends just ahead so that's why it's narrowed.

 

I generally avoided driving on the highways when I could... the highways I found are mostly more congested than the roads, so you could either be in stop-and-go traffic on the highways, or be stopping at traffic lights on the boulevards.  I prefer the boulevards- to me it gives the impression of moving faster, because if you're not at a red light, you generally are moving faster, and people are a little less hormonal when they're not on the highway.  Times to destination would probably be about the same though whether on the highway or on the road, in the central part of the city anyway (and that's where I lived, on the west side.)