The west side of LA is notoriously bad for traffic, especially during the extended morning and evening rush hours. Much of the employment is along Santa Monica Boulevard which stretches from downtown Los Angeles to the coast in Santa Monica. Congestion seems to peak in the area known as Century City, which locals often refer to as “lawyer central”, where several high rise office complexes are dominated by law firms. Over five thousand employees come to one census block alone every day – and tend to come from nearby affluent areas:
Interestingly enough, the adjacent census block houses a major shopping center, where nearly the same number of employees can be found every day. Adjacency clearly does not mean similarity in terms of where employees live:
Many more employees at the shopping center travel longer distances from less affluent areas including south central LA and the San Fernando valley.
Given that this is Los Angeles, where public transit usage is low, the result is considerable congestion along the major arterial roads of the westside (Wilshire, Sunset, and Santa Monica boulevards, as well as I-10 to the south).
Contrast this with a large office complex in downtown LA, employing some thirteen thousand:
Here the pattern is much more dispersed, with significant concentrations in less affluent areas that exclude much of the affluent westside.
The journey to work data provides some interesting opportunities for employers and daytime dependent retail outlets to understand who is there in the daytime, where they live, how long they commute, and their basic demographics. Economic development agencies can benefit from understanding where their residents live and work in order to attract businesses that are advantageous to them and in locations that don’t create stress on their existing infrastructure.