It's nowhere near as bad - I live in the Valley & have a nice 20-30 min commute into the office with otherwise pretty tame traffic around just about every day in my 2 1/2 years in the area. Meanwhile every visit I have had into LA had pretty bad traffic at many times you'd expect it to be normal, including after 10 am on a random Tuesday and ~1 pm on a Sunday.

There is far worse traffic in many of the worst traffic areas in the US than the Bay Area, I'm still confused as to why some try to perpetuate this myth on here.