I’m not shy about my feelings towards L.A.  There are many things I don’t like about this city.  These include but are not limited to: trendy cupcakes, trendy green juice, $14 salads, a sense of entitlement, an alarming number of grown men and women who are still children, small parking lots,  no parking lots, people who are on the gluten-free diet but also don’t know what gluten is, and a lack of water.

But the worst part of this city, without question, is the LA traffic.  There are just too many people in this city.  There are too many cars trying to get to the Hollywood Bowl, Dodger Stadium, and Santa Monica Pier.  Highway pileups begin way before 5pm.  City gridlock can happen anywhere, at anytime.  For drivers in LA, going 10 miles can easily take an hour.

People have been trying to find solutions for years: carpool lanes, anti-gridlock zones, and certain no left turns at peak traffic hours.  Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a fix for the LA traffic problem.  Getting around is a major struggle for everyone.  

You have to be resourceful.  You have to find shortcuts and tricks.  And they don’t always work.  What may be a shortcut one day could add 30 minutes to your commute the next day.  But the one thing you can always count on LA for having is trends.  And just like its annoying green juice trend, LA has driving trends too.

Turo’s (previously known as RelayRides) Los Angeles car rental crew recently put together a drivers guide to getting around the city.  In it, they share tips and tricks from local bloggers who know the city best. What I immediately recognized in most of the answers was trends.  Thanks to apps like Waze and Uber, people are moving around the city differently.  Instead of driving and parking, people are spending the extra money to take an Uber.  People’s favorite “secret” shortcuts are being exposed because of apps like Waze.  Trends change the game.  It will be interesting to see what sticks and what doesn’t.  Here’s that infographic.

If you looked at it closely, you might have seen a familiar name.  Yep, right at the bottom left there – yours truly.  Now this whole article makes sense, Randy!

Turo is a peer-to-peer car sharing service.  Think of AirBnB for cars!  People who have a vehicle to spare can rent it out to someone in need.  Renters always have a variety of cars available to them, and at much cheaper rates than you’d find at more traditional rental services or airports. 

One of Turo’s most appealing features is its large mixture of model options.  Since your selection is pooled from real people all over the city, not just a garage or a lot with a few different models, you have a much bigger variety of cars to choose from.  If I’m trying to plan a road trip up in the mountains, I’m not going to want the same type of vehicle that I’d pick for city exploration. 

I love the way that the internet and technology are connecting people and ideas.  I love that these new ideas are creating trends that change how we do things.  Turo isn’t going to fix LA traffic, but LA is certainly a perfect city for a cool service like this.  It’s also the perfect city to rent a car and GTFO using Turo.  Check them out here:

www.turo.com

Go trip yourself.

-Randy