Is Los Angeles the Best City in America for Commuting?

This story was written and reported by Saul Daniels.

Thursday on Bike To Work Day we are learning that Los Angeles is the best city in America in which to commute by car.

Say what?

Well, according to research by the University of Minnesota's Center for Transportation Studies which crunched numbers from 2010, the issue is not the distance we drive, but the accessibility to jobs. The professors say this "is the first systematic comparison of trends in accessibility to jobs by car within the U.S."
The research plumbs how close origins and destinations are to each other and rates that as important as the speed of the trip.

• See the full study and interactive map
  

Alan Davies, an urban transport consultant who blogs at Crikey, found that "The average Angeleno can only reach 4.9% of metro jobs within 10 minutes driving time, but that very quick trip nevertheless provides access to a massive 237,203 jobs ... With a longer 30 minute commute, the average Angeleno can drive to a mind-boggling 2,458,111 jobs." 

So you have a dream commute if you happen to live near one of those 2,458,111 jobs. For the rest of us, Los Angeles traffic is a nightmare.

Here are the Top 10 accessible metro areas:

1. Los Angeles
2. San Francisco
3. New York
4. Chicago
5. Minneapolis
6. San Jose
7. Washington, D.C.
8. Dallas
9. Boston
10. Houston