LOS ANGELES Los Angeles may boast some of the best weather among U.S. cities while scoring high in celebrity sightings, but the Southern California metropolis remains unable to shake off its more notorious No. 1 rankings for worst smog and heaviest traffic. 
 
 Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest city, again topped the charts for ozone pollution, and finished fourth for particulate pollution such as dust and soot, in the American Lung Association's annual national air quality report card, released on Wednesday. 
 
 The farming town of Bakersfield, California, was rated No. 1 for particulates. 
 
 The greater Los Angeles area has ranked every year but one since the association's first report in 2000 as the city with the worst levels for ozone, a key component of smog formed when sunlight reacts with hydrocarbon and nitrous oxide emissions. 
 
 A major source of ozone pollutants is tailpipe emissions from automobiles, which in turn account for Los Angeles' No. 1 ranking this year as the nation's most traffic-clogged city, according to a separate annual study released on Wednesday. 
 
 Honolulu dropped from first to second place in traffic congestion, followed by San Francisco at No. 3, the traffic-data company Inrix, based in Seattle, reported. 
 
 Inrix also found road and highway congestion in the Los Angeles area was back on the rise in early 2013 after two straight years of decline, a likely reflection of an improved economy. 
 
 Los Angeles has roughly 10 times more roads than Honolulu, but the Inrix study provides a comparative gauge of travel time it calls the "gridlock index," which measures the intensity of traffic congestion to local drivers as it occurs. 
 
 According to Inrix, the average Los Angeles motorist wasted 59 hours last year in jammed traffic, compared with 50 hours for the average Honolulu driver. 
 
 In terms of air quality, California as a whole dominated the list of the most polluted U.S. cities, accounting for seven of the top 10 for ozone and eight of the top 10 for annual levels of particulate pollution, the American Lung Association said. 
 
 Nearly 90 percent of Californians, or 33.5 million people, live in areas plagued by unhealthy air, especially in Los Angeles, the so-called Inland Empire region east of the city, the state capital of Sacramento, and the agricultural heartland of the San Joaquin Valley, the group's study found. 
 
 Those residents are at greater risk for asthma attacks, heart attacks and premature death, the association said. 
 
 However, many California cities have shown steady progress on improving air quality, particularly the Los Angeles region, whose ozone levels have fallen by 36 percent since the organization's first State of the Air report card in 2000. 
 
 The region's annual particle pollution has dropped by 43 percent in that time and is now close to meeting the federal year-round standard for particulates. 
 
 The U.S. cities ranked as having the cleanest air in the latest report were Ames, Iowa, for ozone and Cheyenne, Wyoming, for annual particulate pollution. 
 
 (Reporting by Steve Gorman; Additional reporting by Dana Feldman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Eric Beech) ||||| Entrepreneur Elon Musk has already spent $50,000 trying to make the 405 Freeway better – and he’s willing to pay even more. 
 
 Musk said he is open to pay the cost of adding workers to the widening project "as a contribution to the city and my own happiness. If it can actually make a difference, I would gladly contribute funds and ideas. I've super had it." 
 
 In July, the PayPal and Tesla Motors co-founder met David Murphy, a Westwood resident who heads Angelenos Against Gridlock, a group seeking to hasten the development and repair of infrastructure in California and nationwide. The two shared traffic frustrations, and Musk contributed $50,000 toward an effort to hurry the 405 project along. So far they have little to show for it. 
 
 Musk quips that it's easier getting rockets into orbit than navigating his commute between home in Bel-Air and his Space Exploration Technologies factory in Hawthorne. 
 
 DISCUSSION: Delays on the 405 widening 
 
 "The 405 … varies from bad to horrendous," he told the Los Angeles Times in an interview. "It just seems people in Los Angeles are being tortured by this.… I don't know why they aren't marching in the streets." 
 
 The massive project to widen the 405 Freeway is not only causing traffic nightmares for motorists like Musk but has also been plagued by cost overruns and delays. 
 
 Transportation officials say the project is now slated to take at least a year longer than first anticipated and cost about $100 million more than the originally budgeted $1 billion. 
 
 The companies handling the work won kudos when they were able to reopen the freeway ahead of schedule during the so-called Carmageddon events in 2011 and 2012. But that masked a larger problem for the main contractor, Kiewit, and the subcontractors. 
 
 Officials now aim to complete the bulk of the project by June 2014, with work on the problematic middle segment between Montana Avenue and Sunset Boulevard lasting perhaps until fall 2014, according to Michael Barbour, the veteran engineer overseeing the project for the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. 
 
 The delays and cost overruns are raising the ire of residents and local officials, who say the project is causing major disruptions throughout the already traffic-clogged Westside. 
 
 "This project has been horribly managed," said Zev Yaroslavsky, Los Angeles County supervisor and board member of Metro, which is running the project. "The performance of contractors has left a lot to be desired.… They've shown a complete lack of sensitivity and empathy for the community in which they're doing the work." 
 
 Asked why he and other elected officials have not publicly prodded the contractor to enlist more workers and equipment to speed the project, Yaroslavsky said: "Where's the money going to come from? This project is over budget by a considerable amount, and Metro hasn't figured out how it's going to cover the cost overruns, let alone incur additional costs." 
 
 Several factors have driven the delays, including the structural failure of miles of new sound walls that had to be demolished and rebuilt, a legal wrangle over the placement of ramps near the Getty Center and the complex logistics of finding and relocating more than a dozen utility lines under Sepulveda Boulevard. 
 
 All the while, Kiewit was instructed to keep traffic moving on one of the nation's busiest highways. 
 
 Kiewit released a statement Wednesday defending its work. 
 
 "The costs and schedule impacts are the result of the project's overall complexity and the significant challenges associated with multiple unexpected utility and right-of-way issues," the firm said. "Kiewit and Metro are committed to working together to minimize future delays and resolve final costs. We ... are committed to delivering the highest-quality product on the I-405 project." 
 
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 martha.groves@latimes.com
– Surprise, surprise: Los Angeles again ranked as the city with the worst traffic congestion in America in an annual survey out this week, reports Reuters. Here's a sign of how bad things are, from the LA Times: Entrepreneur Elon Musk—he of Tesla, PayPal, and SpaceX—has forked over $50,000 of his own money to speed up a massive project to widen the 405 freeway, and he's willing to give more if it puts more workers on the job. It's "a contribution to the city and my own happiness," says the commuting CEO. "If it can actually make a difference, I would gladly contribute funds and ideas. I've super had it." The 405 project in particular is behind schedule and over budget, and drivers currently put up with conditions that range from "bad to horrendous," says Musk. "I don't know why they aren't marching in the streets."