THE BEST AND WORST FREEWAYS IN SOUTHLAND

From the easy, breezy 261 to the imperfect 10, The Times ranks them based on speed, crashes and other factors

- By Terry Castleman and Shelby Grad

Photo illustration by JIM COOKE Los Angeles Times; Getty Images photos

Yes, there was a time when Southern California loved its freeways.

In 1970, British writer and critic Reyner Banham lovingly described them as a “special way of being alive,” bringing “on a state of heightened awareness that some locals find mystical.” Joan Didion declared they were “the only secular communion Los Angeles has.” Stores used to sell a popular postcard showing a handsomely landscaped cloverleaf interchange with the headline “Dig those crazy freeways.”

But that was a long time ago, before multihour commutes, freeway chases, road rage, “carmageddon” and the annual Thanksgiving jam on the 405. These days, almost no one “digs” freeways. They tend to judge freeways based on how much pain and stress they bring.

We set out to rank Southern California’s freeways and highways once and for all.

Though no metric is perfect, our approach combines some of the most important data points on freeways — average speed of cars, delays, lost productivity and fatalities — to approximate the worst and best stretches of road in Southern California. We also selected specific stretches of freeway to measure, and those may or may not line up with your commute. We used a year of data from 2022, which is the most recent available. For all these reasons, our rankings are subjective, but they represent our best attempt to examine the freeway system.

Our analysis of Caltrans Performance Measurement System data prioritized and gave similar weighting to four main factors:

■ Average speed: The number of vehicle miles of travel divided by vehicle hours of travel, or Q, is a common metric in traffic studies.

■ Delays: Vehicle hours of delay below 60 mph, or total hours drivers would have saved had the road been moving at 60 mph.

■ Lost productivity: Lost hours of work due to slowdowns, assuming 60 mph as best case.