The good news is 2008 saw a major decrease in traffic, with drivers in the 100 largest metropolitan areas dealing with a 29% decrease in congestion on average. The bad news is we're seeing it because of an increase in gas prices, which led to less driving and more carpooling, and a decrease in jobs, which led to more people sitting on the couch hoping their unemployment doesn't run out so they can afford to keep their benefits. It's a vicious circle. Much like the pain we're seeing in these community-by-community breakdowns of the most congested intersections in these 20 most congested metro areas.

1. Los Angeles	2. New York	3. Chicago	4. Dallas Fort Worth
5. Washington, D.C.	6. Houston	7. San Francisco	8. Boston
9. Seattle	10. Minneapolis-St. Paul	11. Philadelphia	12. Atlanta
13. Phoenix	14. Miami	15. San Diego	16. Denver
17. Baltimore	18. San Jose	19. Detroit	20. Riverside-San Bernardino

Though traffic does correlate to population rank, with the top four metropolitan areas also in the four worst cities for traffic, there are some anomalies. The Washington, D.C.-Arlington-Alexandria area is only the eighth most populous region in the country but is the fifth worst when it comes to traffic due to its high capacity of employment in the area and the lack of good housing stock for middle class families within "The Beltway" area.

Detroit is 11th largest in terms of population but only has the 19th worst traffic situation, primarily because of a 47% decrease in traffic year-over-year due to the economy and dramatic job loss. The collapse of the housing market hit Riverside-San Bernardino, a.k.a. the Inland Empire, hardest of all. The area saw a drop of 57% in traffic congestion, which is almost the same as the 55% drop in median home prices. While there's probably not a 1:1 ratio between the change in home values and congestion, they're likely connected.

Areas less affected by the housing market still experienced decreases in traffic, but at a lower level. For instance, home prices in Dallas remained stable and traffic congestion only decreased by 13% year-over-year, causing Dallas to move up to the fourth most congested city.

Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago are, as expected, still the worst cities for traffic in America. Los Angeles is so bad that peak hour congestion in Los Angeles is twice what it is in Chicago. The combination of a large population and low density makes L.A. even worse than the more populous New York. Compared to the Big Apple, Los Angeles also has fewer mass transit options.

Click on any of the cities above to see their current rank, population, congestion change and worst time of day for traffic. You can also view a gallery of the 100 worst intersections that fall within each city. A look at the hotspots reveal a few similar trends: intersecting highways, two-lane sections with onramps and merging lanes.

If you're reading this post it means you've actually made it home or made it to work. Congrats. There's probably someone still stuck in traffic.

[via Forbes, Google Earth]

Nissan is realigning some of its North American operations to ensure long-term competitiveness in the U.S. market. The actions include a restructuring of the Nissan North America (NNA) sales and marketing operations and the integration of Nissan Design America (NDA).

NNA is restructuring its sales and marketing field operations to be better positioned to serve dealers and consumers. Specific actions include transitioning from a field structure based on 11 regional sales offices to a new structure with seven regional sales offices and 23 satellite offices in 18 locations across the United States. This shift involves the closure of four regional sales offices: Nissan Mid-Atlantic in Herndon, Va.; Nissan Northwest in Pleasanton, Calif.; Infiniti Central in Aurora, Ill.; and Infiniti South in Atlanta.

Additional enhancements to the sales and marketing organization include expanded personnel assigned to support each dealer and the creation of a dedicated electric vehicle project team.

NDA is integrating its operations into its San Diego studio beginning April 1. This action is being taken to strengthen NDA’s role in Nissan’s global design organization by increasing the level of participation in the exploratory and advanced phases of North American and global design projects. This integration will result in the redeployment of the design facility in Farmington Hills, Mich., for use by other functions of the company. This does not impact the research and development operations at Nissan Technical Center North America, which has facilities in Farmington Hills and in Stanfield, Ariz.

Taken together, these actions will eliminate approximately 110 positions. Nissan intends to achieve the majority of these reductions through a voluntary transition plan.

In North America, Nissan's operations include automotive design, engineering, consumer and corporate financing, sales and marketing, distribution and manufacturing. Nissan is dedicated to improving the environment under the Nissan Green Program 2010, whose key priorities are reducing CO2 emissions, cutting other emissions and increasing recycling. More information on Nissan in North America and the complete line of Nissan and Infiniti vehicles can be found online at www.NissanUSA.com and www.infiniti.com.

Photo Credit: Mark Renders / Getty Images News

[iReport]

The driver is, miraculously, alive, though has suffered from a fractured neck and we're pretty certain he's going to be out a lot of money in lawyer's fees. You can see the airbags deployed, though the steering wheel seems to be a good twenty feet from the car when that happened. (h/t LTDScott and Vintage Racer) [Source: MSNBC, NBC San Diego]

Four cars in the neighborhood of UC San Diego were torched last night. All four vehicles were apparently Toyotas, and two of them, a current model-year Tacoma and Corolla, were completely destroyed. Investigators note that the only accelerant used appears to be gasoline. Man, once disgruntled French auto executives move into the neighborhood, all bets are off, apparently. – Davey G. Johnson

Cars set ablaze in San Diego neighborhood [San Jose Mercury News]

Related:
More French Cars Up in Smoke [Internal]

Skiny maneuvers the A6 Avant into proper takeoff position in San Diego.

Generally, when you wake up in the morning at a deluxo hotel in beautiful downtown San Diego and find out that your next destination is in the 909, your first inclination is to break out in hives, go into a seizure, mess yourself, and then put on a straight-brimmed baseball cap, take a hit off the glass dick, climb into a lifted Avalanche, get a slew of tribal tats and crank up any and every Fred Durst-related project you can get your hands on.

Dave Green (left) used to be pretty. Somehow we doubt Richard Rawlings ever was.

Instead, we had eggs that were quite good, drank a fair amount of coffee, and sat down at a table with a group of people, all of whom, except for Jennifer Nicole, had varying models of Motorola RAZRs. Ours was even admired for being "old school," despite the fact that we only bought it last fall. Emil's was gold, Keri's was pink, and Claus had one in some crazy dark finish we'd never seen before which is probably only available to owners of Brabus-tuned cars.

But much in the manner of ninjas during one or another of those Shogunates they had in Japan back in the time, we and our RAZRs would all soon be hurtling toward California Speedway in Fontana. Little did we know, but those of us in the black Audi A8L would also be headed toward our finest hour on the 2006 Bullrun.

The intersection was a madhouse. Danny Coyle was pulling mad donuts and block-long burnouts in the Mallett Corvette. Jen couldn't figure out which way to point the Audi until Emil pointed out to her that she'd be driving out over a curb. Skiny and Bret were about to enter a world of hurt and emerge unscathed, but with their time shattered. Emil was shooting back and forth like a shuttlecock. And Claus? Well, Claus kicked back with his feet up on the open door of his Brabus and made use of his RAZR. Peter Kolb was undoubtedly being more German than anyone else. In fact, we're starting to wonder if he'd actually shrunken the state of Bavaria down to pocket-size when nobody was looking and was carrying it in his pants, simply for added precision. A little extra Weissach never hurt anyone, after all. Except for James Dean.

And then, suddenly, we were off. And miraculously, we were really off. After blowing past Los Matadors on the 163, we didn't see anyone until we got onto the 15, blasting past Skiny and Haller in their A6 Avant. And then the crackle started on the radio. The heavy hitters were quickly moving up behind us. Tove Christensen. the Lehman-Haupt/Ferretti GT with Noah at the wheel. The Team Chris 911. And of course, Danny Coyle wheeling the Chuck Mallett 'Vette.

They blasted past us, with Danny the first to arrive, but not without Jen getting a crack in to Danny over the CB about how it felt to be behind a girl. More chatter, including some worrying news from the well-tuned scanners in the GT regarding Chippies searching for Bullrunners. And sure enough, not long after, the news came over the radio that Team Chris and the GT boys had been snagged. We attempted to get a shot as we drove by, but our imprecise Japanese camera did not allow us such a luxury. We knew we should've bought a Leica. Peter Kolb is no doubt laughing at us as we write this.

Then we flew past Chuck Mallett on the side of the road, refuelling the 'Vette, which only had a 66-mile range. Keri commented, "Watch, in five minutes, he'll come flying past us." Guess what? He did, doing well over a buck on the hard shoulder. Keri put out an APB to all Bullrunners within range, pointing out that in California, the hard shoulders are often filled with tire-and-air-dam-destroying detrius and that we all should be careful.

Meanwhile, just a few miles before we hit I-10, we got stuck in massive traffic. We're not quite sure how we got past Tove, but with the traffic locked in and the GT boys and Team Chris stuck behind us due to their run-in with law enforcement, we knew we had a real shot. Especially if Chuck and Danny ran out of gas again.

On the 10, we made good time, and on the offramp to the Speedway, Jen made use of her looks and got us up in the line. We drove carefully, as the fuzz tend to hang out around the entrance to the speedway, and then hauled ass to the staging area, where we pulled up third behind the Magnaflow RS4 and the Mallett Corvette. The RS4 guys had voluntarily disqualified themselves because they'd left 20 minutes earlier, due to the co-driver not feeling well, putting the nearly bone-stock A8L in behind the 900hp Corvette.

Which just goes to show that on the Bullrun, horsepower is far from everything.

Related:
More on the Bullrun [Internal]

If you want to blast across the country, you can do it for as little as the cost of gasoline, accomodations, coffee and any incidental repairs and speeding tickets you may incur. If you wanna do it on the Bullrun, you've gotta pony up 14k. As an embedded journalist, we were provided with two nights of accomodations, at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas and at the W Hotel in San Diego, which, in the interest of full disclosure, Los Jalopniks must admit to you. They also provided us with meals in Las Vegas, snacks in Lake Havasu, more meals in San Diego, a taco truck in Fontucky and a last supper in Los Angeles. With that out of the way, click through for an abbreviated Jalopnik-style Team Party Crash.

As somebody said to us, "The girls here can smell the size of your wallet a mile away." And well, it's largely true. The greatest females on the rally were generally the married ones, so we spent much of our time talking to them. After all, wouldn't you rather have a good conversation with somebody you know you is off-limits than spew futile, boring bullshit back and forth with somebody there's a 99% chance you won't score with anyway? Well, we suppose your mileage could vary.

Regardless, the girls they rounded up to attend the parties tended not to be interested in broke-dick bloggers. Instead, we tended to appeal to millionaire men. Big ups to the Bullrun wives, though. Your ovaries are equal to the cojones of your husbands, if not superior. Meanwhile, we're gonna go about figuring out how to be gay. Spence, CTE, a little help here?

More on the Bullrun [Internal]

The Jundland Wastes are not to be travelled lightly!

With Miss Nicole back behind the wheel and properly chastised, we cruised through some amazing scenery down 95, as well as an abundance of trailer parks, until we got to Quartzsite, which besides being home to overstuffed 55 gallon drums of quartz, is also home to something called "The Main Event," which apparently involves thousands of people in motorhomes trading rocks. It's also famous as the only place Dan Gurney and Brock Yates were ever pulled over on the Cannonball, a traffic stop that prompted Gurney to stretch the Kirk F. White Ferrari Daytona's legs, eventually hitting 171 mph. Ours only tops out at 130, but for the next few stages, that top speed is primarily useless, and the stealth factor will prove invaluable.

"Leaving Lake Havasu" doesn't quite have the same impact as "Leaving Las Vegas," but we left anyway.

Cutting across on I-10 from Quartzsite to Blythe and having switched drivers, we loaded up on bonus cups at a drive-thru Starbucks, cut across town and caught CA 78 south, which turned out to be one of the most incredible drives of the trip. Rory Camagian of Los Matadors took the same route with a camera guy on board their Gallardo SE while Emil relaxed on the Bullrun bus and watched Beverly Hills Cop and drank beer. When we convened that evening, you could see the awe in his face. We went from farmland to straight-up Tatooine-style desert, and then once we took a quick run down the 111 to I-8 east of El Centro, we passed through mountainous, rocky terrain, the likes of which we'd never seen. It was like a micron-sized being's view of piles of sand.

Keri was really giving the long-wheelbase Audi's throttle the business on this leg, and the Valentine One didn't start chirping with any regularity until we got into the San Diego metro area. We were craning our neck and straining our eyes, staring out the back window through the tint, trying to make out telltale Crown Vic grille-and-headlight combos.

We pulled into the parking lot across the street from the W Hotel, not having placed well due to the morning's Garmin goof (we really can't thank you enough, Noah!), but we were proud of ourselves, having shaved an hour and a half off the time predicted by the Audi's Nav Bitch, and somehow, even though the only moments of real levity were laughing about random signs and business in Quartzsite and Blythe, we were friends. There's something about spending more than the better part of a day trying to beat the clock, other drivers and the po-po while doing it safely and taking only reasonable chances that really bonds you to people. We know it sounds somewhat cornball, but it's a trial by fire, and by the end of the day, we were working really well as a team, with the right-seater running the Nav Bitch, the driver doing her driving thing, and Los Jalopnik studying the road atlas, watching for cops, and disembarking in an attempt to figure out why a train hadn't kept a-rollin'.

The next morning, when we ran into Keri in the parking lot while shooting cars, we gave each other a big hug and she asked, "Do you want to ride along with us again today?" While we had other options, we immediately said yes.

More on the Bullrun [Internal]

On an absolutely sweltering, uncharacteristically humid Nevada morning, after a blast to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway with Noah Lehman-Haupt in the SuperSpeeders/Gotham Dream Cars Ford GT, we hopped in the back seat of the Rensing/Nicole Audi A8L, did a quick lap of the Shelby proving ground, and shot off for lunch in Lake Havasu. Click through for the tale.

As one of the first cars to leave the speedway, we knew it would only be a matter of time until characters like Lehman-Haupt/Ferretti, Tove Christensen, the Collins Brothers and Peter "I drive Porsche" Kolb would come hammering past us on I-15. We kept in radio contact with Noah, whose Garmin GPS had rendered the team nearly unstoppable on the eastern half of the rally. It had failed us plotting the route to the Speedway, however, and it was about to fail us again.

Noah had decided he and Rob were going to take 93 over to I-40 at Kingman, AZ. Which, of course, took us right over the Hoover Dam. Now, we've wanted to see the Hoover Dam since we were a wee Jalopnik, but today wasn't the right time to be sightseeing and moving slowly. But, slowly we were moving, so we made the best of it and took in the sights. We'd thought about counselling Keri and Jen against the route, but seeing as we'd met Keri roughly five minutes before we got in her car and Jen when we got in the car, we figured that it'd be prudent to let it lie.

We did have a piece of advice from Alex Roy to share, however; proceed slowly through Kingman, as it's a hornets' nest of speedtraps. The best part was when Lehman-Haupt got addled and radioed us later saying, "We're coming into Kingman. We've heard that Alex Roy says there are a lot of speed traps here." Thanks again, Noah.

We caught AZ 95 down to Lake Havasu City, and then something ridiculous happened. Lake Havasu's most famous attraction is London Bridge, which was disassembled in the late 1960s and put back together in Havasu, opening in '71. Yet off the city's main artery, there are no directions to the Bridge, which we were supposed to cross to find the checkpoint. Find it we did, with help from a local girl in a Jeep. Every Bullrunner without prior experience in the town had the same problem. In fact, many said that this checkpoint was the biggest goatfuck of the entire rally.

While we were refuelling, Jen stopped to talk to some folks who wanted to know know if we were making a movie or something, prompting a frustrated discussion between us and Keri, who finally hopped out of the car and yelled, "JEN!"

More on the Bullrun [Internal]

To get to the W Hotel in San Diego, of course. From front to back, we have Keri Rensing (who drove the stage, shaving 1 1/2 hours off the time predicted by the GPS from Lake Havasu to SD), our intrepid reporter, who only nearly soiled his pants once, feeling somewhat like the inverse of Frog in Smokey and the Bandit, and Jennifer Nicole, whose girlish charms got us out of a momentary jam the following day on the way to California Speedway. Bret Haller captured the exhausted trio on their way to a date with bliss bath products. Needless to say, he and Skiny beat us to the checkpoint.

More on the Bullrun [Internal]

We're not sure if TeeVee Wert really wanted to go on the Bullrun, as he made some namby-pamby excuse about being stuck at some Ferrari party because he needed to impress some girl and dragged Austin with him, thus leaving the fully-awesome Skiny without Jalopnik pals to hang out with in Detroit (note to people in general — you're missing out on radness if you don't hang with Skiny, he's probably nicer than you, we're willing to bet he's faster than you and he's undoubtedly cooler than you).

Nevertheless, we'll fuel Ray's thirst for all things Fast with this shot of "Schnell," Claus Ettenberger's Troy Lee-painted Fast, which we perched on the hood of the Jalop-carrying A8L in San Diego right before we took off for California Speedway in Fontucky. And apparently, our contact with the talisman paid off — we came in second behind Chuck Mallett and Danny Coyle's 900hp Corvette with Jen at the wheel.

More on the Bullrun [Internal]

A black SUV was headed from San Diego way down Mexico way carrying suspected illegal immigrants when U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials began tracking it. As traffic began to bunch up near the border, the vehicle pulled to the side and agents approached. The driver then attempted to take off and swerve back into traffic, leading the agents to open fire. The shots killed the driver and the San Ysidro crossing, the busiest port of entry in the United States was closed for nine hours. It's been open for five hours now, so we're betting the line of cars on I-5 only stretches to Santa Clarita, not Bakersfield.

Border reopens after shooting [CNN]

Related:
Signs, Signs, Everywhere the Signs, Droppin' On the Vehicles, Breakin' My Mind [Internal]

Jeez, SD's turning into the city of wacky truck-related accidents. First a rig hauling a dumpster takes out a massive freeway sign and now a big rig whose driver stopped to ask directions watched helplessly as his semi began rolling down a hill, eventually taking out eight parked cars and smashing into a building. Thankfully, nobody was hurt, but it seems to us that the town should consider changing its slogan to "City of Ridiculous Hal Needham Film Outtakes."

Big Rig Bulldozes 8 Cars While Driver Asks For Directions [10 News]

Related:
Signs, Signs, Everywhere the Signs, Droppin On the Vehicles, Breakin My Mind [Internal]

Okay, so technically they're tuner cars, but the title pun was too good to pass up. IGN bro'd down at the Hot Import Daze show in San Diego and posted us'ns a report on the internets. While we only tend to encountered the pneumatic imported(?) ladies once a year at SEMA (we tend to frequent car shows populated by tattooed rockabilly chix), the IGN chaps were nice enough to capture the ahem action and package it up for us. Our favorite thing at the show had to be the Audi with the skateboard A/V system. But they should've used one of decks instead.

Hot Import Daze [IGN]

Related:
Texas Tuner Gallery: DialD Covers Corpus Christi Heatwave [Internal]