For your January trip, just rent a car. You'll save tons of $, and I was surprised to find on my last trip that driving is really not that bad there. And this coming from someone who hates driving. Especially around West Hollywood, the major streets are in a grid and there are few magically disappearing lanes or one-ways.

This is the sentiment I see expressed all the time. Everyone who has never driven in L.A. and finally does comes back surprised how natural and easy it is.

I'm actually always surprised that people even have the idea that driving is bad in Los Angeles. Maybe it's because L.A. has a bad reputation for traffic, but that's really only on certain freeways at rush hour, and even then, it's not hard--just slow.

It makes sense that driving in L.A. is smooth. EVERYONE drives there and drives all the time, so they're actually pretty good with the rules of the road (at least compared to the rest of the U.S./Canada). Yes, it's true, L.A. drivers are a little on the aggressive side, but not in the jerky, annoying, road-rage-causing way: rather, it's in the way that most efficiently utilizes space and keeps traffic flowing smoothly. You'll see people change lanes and squeeze into a spot in traffic if there's not so much as one car length plus six inches, but they do it smoothly, and everyone expects it, so it's actually MUCH easier than it sounds. (It's kind of like driving in New York: the thought of people constantly weaving around with inches to spare to get around parked cars, garbage trucks, buses, disappearing lanes, etc. sounds horrific, but when you actually try it, it's not that difficult, since everyone's moving so slowly and gives way to people merging.)

As for surface street driving, well--L.A.'s freeway culture has made it so everyone traveling even a moderate distance (which most people are) is likely to get on the freeway (even if it's heavily trafficked!), which means that surface streets are actually usually pretty clear of traffic, since only the locals use them! And as silverthief2 said, disappearing lanes and one-way streets are exceedingly rare.

I'll take driving in L.A. over any other major or even mid-sized city in the U.S.

Right. The only thing I didn't like was the traffic volume, coming from NC where the freeway closest to my house definitely should not have been built based on the light traffic counts. But a minor gripe overall.

+1

Quick Joke:
What's the difference between L.A.'s I-10 and Washington D.C.'s Beltway?
One is a parking lot that runs from Hell to the Beach, and the other is a parking lot that endlessly circles Purgatory!

Seriously, L.A.'s freeways are fine with a little pre-planning...

1) Don't plan on lots of freeway driving during commuting hours. If you can avoid them from 7-9 a.m. & 4-7 p.m.; you will save yourself a world of aggravation.

2) If you've got to travel a significant distance in the greater L.A. area, be prepared with maps (or GPS) and your car radio tuned to a news station that does frequent traffic reports. (KNX AM 1070)

3) Ask a local for alternative routes. Unlike places like the SFO bay area where all traffic seems to funnel into a single bridge or pass through the hills, most routings through the LA basin have multiple options....and if one is gridlocked by traffic, another route may be flowing freely. Sometimes it's a routing that goes slightly further (but a freeway speeds rather than stop-start) and sometimes its a surface-street alternative to freeway travel.
But you'll never know if you don't ask (or hit the maps).