How can 13 miles of the 405 cause so much trouble?

Easy, if those 13 miles are between Imperial Highway and Getty Center Drive. A new study on the nation's traffic corridors ranks that stretch of the 405 as the most congested in 2011. Here are the ugly numbers:

Travel time: 33 minutes
Average speed: 24 mph
Delay: 20 minutes

In third position, according to the study by research firm INRIX, is the 15-mile stretch of the 10 from Lincoln Boulevard to Alameda Street.

Travel time: 35 minutes
Average speed: 26 mph
Delay: 20 minutes

Of the nation's 25 most congested corridors, eight were in L.A. five in NY, and four in Chicago. All of which is probably not that surprising. What might be surprising is that L.A. was not the worst metropolitan area for traffic congestion. That honor goes to Honolulu. From Bloomberg:

Drivers in the city, the state of Hawaii's largest, wasted an average of 58 hours stuck in traffic last year, compared with 56 hours in Los Angeles, according the Inrix National Traffic Scorecard, released today. Honolulu jumped to No. 1, from No. 37 a year earlier, because of a change in the way Inrix counted congestion, said Jim Bak, co-author. "We've shifted to focus on travel time for individual drivers, rather than overall congestion," Bak said in a telephone interview. "L.A. has 15 times more people and 20 times the roadways of Honolulu, so at the system level, it obviously has much greater overall congestion."

Here are the 10 worst metro areas (2010 ranking in parentheses)
1. Honolulu (1)
2. Los Angeles (2)
3. San Francisco (6)
4. New York (3)
5. Bridgeport, Conn. (5)
6. Washington, D.C. (4)
7. Seattle (8)
8. Austin (14)
9. Boston (9)
10. Chicago (7)