San Diego Freeways

I'm not a hardcore city driver, so read the following accordingly. But I really enjoy driving, and so far, I really enjoy driving in San Diego.

Now, I am not working full-time, so I can schedule my travel times to avoid commute times, which means that my experience may not be typical. But I find the SD freeways fantastic for driving. You can get almost anywhere in the city within 25 to 30 minutes, if you avoid heavy traffic. That's pretty amazing, given the size and topography of this city.

One cost of driving this system is attention: You have to really pay attention to the signage. In order to get you to all these places via freeway, those freeways have to be fairly complicated. There are intersections of freeway where three or four major freeways intersect. North and south, east and west. And the exit and entrance ramps.

Even ignoring THAT complexity, there is the immediate challenge of driving in whatever traffic you are in. There are a lot of people in this area of the country. In my three and a half hour drive from San Diego to Camarillo (north of LA), the traffic density hardly changed, and it was dense. It was like SD freeway traffic the entire 200 miles or whatever it was. No chance for cruise control, I learned.

It helps that my car is a sweet ride...