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Music This is But Why a podcast for Curious Kids.

I'm Jane Lindholm.

And right now, I am actually standing on an overpass in Los Angeles, California.

Maybe you can hear the traffic behind me. I'm here in Los Angeles talking about traffic, partly because Los Angeles is known for traffic.

There are almost 8 million cars registered in Los Angeles County, which includes more than just the city.

There are only about 10 million people who live here, so that's a lot of cars.

And when you think about all the miles that people drive around this city and around this county every day, it's astronomical.

In fact, one of the most crowded highways

in the whole world is here. The 405 freeway, close to 400,000 vehicles go on it every single day,

and its congestion problems are pretty legendary. Some people call it Carmageddon when the cars are just stopped on the freeway.

Other times people say it's called the 405 because people can only go about four or

five miles per hour. Los Angeles has a lot of cars and a lot of drivers and

it's a good place to start our conversation today, which is all about traffic.

...