[JohnMakin]

Like the idea - lived in LA my whole life and it wasn’t until the start of covid, when I was able to commute across huge swaths of the city in the order of dozens of minutes rather than hours, did I realize how distorted my view of its physical size was - in places like LA, when asked how far something is, an angelino will almost always respond in a measurement of time rather than distance.

[mannyv]

In the New York City area time is the measure of distance. I think that's the same in every large Metro area.

[JohnMakin]

In LA, you can go during non rush hour on what should be a 5 minute skip across an “easy” onramp/offramp, and get stuck in 2 hour traffic jam (probably an accident but who knows could just be all 3 major sports having massive games at the exact same time and you’re not a sports fan so you didnt expect carmageddon) to go 3 miles, and make it the same way back in five minutes. There is no such linear relationship. It’s kind of like predicting the weather, depending on what part you live in.

[jbaber]

Hilariously, LA doesn't look that distorted because it's uniformly molasses.

[MattGrommes]

haha, I had the same realization after I moved from San Diego. Nobody in Albuquerque wanted to hear "20 minutes" when asking "How far is X?"

[pants2]

Somehow in San Diego everything is 25 minutes from everything else