Whoa! LA Has More Cars Than Palm Trees?

The morning sun slanted through the window of a dusty minivan, painting gold stripes across 7-year-old Lena’s dinosaur-themed backpack as she chewed her strawberry cereal bar. Her mom was already in the driver’s seat, the engine humming a soft, familiar tune, and the backseat was packed with three other kids from their neighborhood carpool: Jake, who was busy stacking limited-edition Pokémon cards on his lap; Mia, who was practicing her spelling words out loud (“c-a-r-p-o-o-l, carpool!”); and baby Leo, who was gurgling in his rear-facing car seat, clutching a stuffed T-Rex that was missing one eye. “Hold on, everyone, we’re gonna merge onto the 101 in a second,” Mom said, and Lena pressed her face to the window, watching the line of cars creep forward, bumper to bumper, past rows of tall palm trees swaying in the warm California breeze.

“Mom?” Lena asked, crinkling her nose as a car next to them honked loudly. “Why are there so many cars here? Are there more cars than palm trees in LA?” Her mom laughed, turning up the radio to drown out the honking. “Probably! I’ve heard there are way more cars than palm trees in this city. But don’t worry, we’ll be at school in 10 minutes—just as long as the guy in the red truck up ahead stops texting and moves!”

That question stuck with Lena all day at school. During recess, she asked her teacher, Mr. Hernandez, who grew up in Chicago. “Oh, for sure,” he said, leaning against the monkey bars. “LA has more cars per person than almost any other city in the world. When I was a kid, I took the train to school every day. Here? Most kids have to be driven by their parents, or take a special school bus.” At lunch, Lena asked her friend Jake, who lived in Pasadena. “Of course there are more cars!” he said, holding up a half-eaten taco. “My dad says if you lined up all the cars in LA, they’d stretch all the way to the moon. Well, maybe not the moon, but definitely to New York.”

By the time Lena got home from school, she was bursting with questions. And if you’re reading this book, you’ve probably had the same questions too: Why are there so many cars in Los Angeles? Why don’t more people take the bus? What would LA even look like if we didn’t have any cars at all? Let’s find out.

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First, Let’s Count the Cars (and the Palm Trees)

To answer the big question—“Are there more cars than palm trees in LA?”—we have to look at the numbers. And no, we’re not going to make you do math homework. We’ll do the math for you!

Right now, Los Angeles County has 10.7 million registered cars. That’s a 7 followed by six zeros—10,000,000! To put that in perspective, there are about 8.8 million people who live in LA County. That means there’s roughly 1 car for every 1.2 people. If you grabbed two random kids from your classroom, one of you would definitely have a car waiting for you at home (even if you’re too young to drive it yet!). Some families even have three or four cars: one for mom, one for dad, one for the teenager who just got their license, and an old pickup for going to the beach.

Now, how many palm trees are there in LA? The city’s parks department did a count a few years ago, and they found only about 50,000 palm trees planted along streets, in parks, and in front of shopping centers. That’s a big number, right? But it’s tiny compared to the number of cars. If you lined up all the cars in LA end to end, they would stretch 153 million miles long. That’s enough to drive from Los Angeles to New York City 55 times—and you’d still have enough cars left over to circle the entire planet 3.5 times! All those cars take up way more space than all the palm trees put together. In fact, if you gathered every palm tree in LA and planted them in a single field, they’d fit inside the 405 freeway parking lot during rush hour.

<tip>💡 Fun Fact for Young Readers: Cars actually got to LA *before* palm trees did! The first car in Los Angeles was brought here in 1899 by a businessman named J. Philip Eshleman, and everyone in the tiny town of 100,000 people gathered to stare at it like it was a spaceship. Most of the palm trees you see in LA today were planted in the 1930s, when the city was getting ready to host the Summer Olympics. So cars have been a part of LA for 30 years longer than the palm trees we all love to take pictures with!</tip>

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Why LA Is Built for Cars (Not the Other Way Around)

So now we know there are way more cars than palm trees. But why? Why doesn’t LA have more trains and buses, like New York City or Chicago? To understand that, you have to know what LA looks like from above.

If you fly over LA in an airplane, you’ll see it looks like a giant, flat pancake that keeps getting bigger every year. We call this urban sprawl, which is just a fancy grown-up way of saying the city is spread really, really far apart. Unlike New York, where all the tall buildings are squished together on a small island, LA’s houses, stores, schools, and parks are spread out over 500 square miles of desert and coastline. Most people live in neighborhoods that are miles away from the closest grocery store, movie theater, skate park, or beach.

Let’s take an example. If you live in the San Fernando Valley, which is the northern part of LA, it’s a 45-minute drive to get to Santa Monica Pier. If you live in East LA, it’s a 30-minute drive to get to Hollywood. There are almost no shortcuts—you have to get in a car to go almost anywhere fun. And if you don’t have a car? You’re stuck at home.

Take 10-year-old Carlos, who lives in Pasadena with his parents and little sister. His favorite thing in the whole world is watching the Lakers play at Crypto.com Arena in downtown LA. If he takes the bus, he has to walk 15 minutes to the nearest bus stop, ride for 25 minutes, transfer to a different bus that only comes once every 20 minutes, ride for another 20 minutes, then walk 10 minutes to the arena. The whole trip takes 1 hour and 45 minutes, and the last bus home leaves at 9:30 PM, so if the game goes into overtime, he’s stuck at the arena until the next morning. But if his dad drives him? It’s only 40 minutes, and they can leave whenever they want, even if the game goes into double overtime. Carlos says he’d never take the bus to a Lakers game—he’d rather stay home and play basketball in his driveway than miss the first quarter!

“The bus is fine for going to school, I guess,” Carlos told us in an interview last month. “But if I want to go anywhere fun, I have to ask my mom or dad to drive me. All my friends do the same thing.”

That’s the problem with LA’s bus and train system: it doesn’t go everywhere, and it doesn’t run all the time. Only 30% of people in LA live within a 10-minute walk of a bus stop or train station. A lot of bus lines stop running at 8 PM, which is right around the time most kids get out of after-school activities like soccer practice, piano lessons, or robotics club. 12-year-old Mia, who lives in Long Beach, loves going to the Beverly Hills Public Library to read graphic novels. The bus ride there takes 1 hour and 20 minutes, and she has to transfer twice. Her mom works late on Tuesdays, so she can’t drive her, and Mia doesn’t feel safe riding the bus alone after dark. So most weeks, she can’t go to the library at all.

“I wish we had a train that goes straight to Beverly Hills,” Mia told us, flipping through a stack of Naruto manga. “But for now, I have to wait until my mom has a day off. Or I order the books online, but it’s not the same as browsing the shelves.”

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Cars Aren’t Just for Grown-Ups in LA

If you’re a kid in LA, cars aren’t just a way for your parents to get to work. They’re a huge part of your life, too. Think about the last time you went through a drive-thru: maybe you got a chocolate milkshake after school, or a breakfast burrito on the weekend with your family. LA has more drive-thrus than any other city in the US—there are over 4,000 of them! You can get anything at a drive