San Diego to Santa Barbara - Best way thru/around LA

jefe 4x4 wrote:
Having lived and worked right down town L.A. for almost 40 years, I developed techniques to get from A to B with the least resistance. One technique was to travel at completely off hours, which means at night. After about 11 p.m. you can go right through on the 5 with barely a slowdown. There are gas stations suitable for RV's along the way. Just get on gas buddy to see where and what prices. The first thing we did when I retired from the L.A. Philharmonic was to move to the west slope, Northern Sierra Nevada east of Nevada City. Nevada City has nary a stop light. Many stop signs, a few round a bouts, but no lights. Also, no traffic to speak of. It's been 8 yrs. since we moved and any time I HAVE to go back down to L.A. I'm always shocked at how fast everyone drives. The good news is they're all equally aggressive so it's easy to fit in. Not like the bay area where there is a wide splay of driving aggressiveness down to downright timidity. That is much harder to adjust to. Just don't travel in L.A. between 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Do travel on Sunday morning, especially through downtown any time before 1 p.m. Friday between 10 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. was also slightly lighter as far as traffic. I have a 50 year history driving the freeways in L.A. i could sense when the U.S. economy was up or down by estimating the traffic volume. In a down economy, there was a lot less traffic. In boom times the roads were loaded. I went through a lot of ups and downs. My mantra was to always (if i could) swim upstream when everyone else was swimming downstream.
jefe

From my limited experience as a commuter, not a resident of LA, I think that's an accurate description of LA traffic. Timing is huge. I lived in Central CA and had to travel through LA to SD and it was all about timing. Heading Southbound, I would try to be at the 5/210 split around 1030 and I could said through LA on the 5. It was still likely wall to wall traffic but it was flowing at 70+. I wouldn't want to do that pulling a large RV. Reverse from SD, I did my best to get out of town by 2:00 so I was at least in Irvine by 3:00. Traffic would be stop and go but livable. If work prevented getting out early, I would consider just eating dinner in SD and drive late. I've tried the 15 and other routes but they are so far out of the way, and jam up just as bad at the wrong time, you have to know the patterns. Google traffic only tells you what's red now, not what's red in an hour or two when you will get to a spot.

I made the mistake of trying to drive through LA on Friday night once and never again. Maybe it was a fluke, but after that, if I couldn't get through in the midday gap and had a choice, I'd just hit the road early Sat. morning.