Yeah, it would take an insanely good proposition to deal with So Cal traffic on a regular basis. I consider Seattle to be not quite as bad....5 years of increased population while not actually building out any of the roads or bridges to accomodate more traffic. There are still less people in Seattle, but fewer lanes means about the same level of frustration, especially when anything actually goes wrong.

The bay area isn't nearly so bad. Today, I had to run my rental back to the airport (uh, 8-10 miles each way) during "rush hour" and I made it in decent time. It helps that while I was gone, they upgraded a few critical junctions.