Anyone who lives in Los Angeles can tell you in gruesome detail what it’s like to sit in traffic. Though crisscrossed by a maze of freeways, L.A. annually leads the nation in time spent idling. And while the city’s air pollution has visibly diminished over the years, smog, like traffic, remains an axiom and a curse of L.A. life.




In September, 2009 Atlantic Monthly named 
