The commute on the 91 fwy is one of the worst in the country.

Soon they're predicting a 3 hr commute time between Riverside and most of LA County within the next 10 years. It's that bad as more people move inland from OC/LAC.

My friends who live in OC (and had girl/boyfriends in Riverside) always used the tollway to get there, it's really worth it to turn a 2hr drive into 30 minutes.. it's worth the sanity.

For the record, my brother currently endures the worst freeway interchange in the nation on a daily basis as he drives from Culver city (closer to LAX) to southern Burbank (near Universal Studios). It's the 405/101 interchange. It's so bad, he usually takes surface streets to get to work.

the worst toll gouging has to be the Yokohama/Chiba bridge and tunnel combo. The idea was to link Yokohama to the slower growing Chiba penninsula, but the toll price of nearly US$70 was quite a turnoff. They reduced the toll to $55 or thereabouts and that's helped a little bit but they never expect that road to be toll-free.

We have a pay-per-use tollway here in SAN on the 15fwy. it's handy since traffic has gone from smooth to astronomically bad in the past 5 years with all the residental development going on that side of the city. It can save ~30 minutes easily, but one accident and the lanes are jammed up. It's reversable as well, so southbound traffic uses the tollway during the AM, the northbound traffic during the PM.