If you have spent any time at all on Los Angeles streets and freeways, no one has to tell you that there are few signs of traffic congestion easing much.

But just to show how much worse it is out there, transportation officials released a traffic report card Monday that looks like a student's nightmare: failing grades abound, and passing marks are rare.

Congestion at many intersections has gotten so bad that traffic experts this year had to come up with a new scale to differentiate the bad from the even worse from the truly hideous.

The plan measures congestion on surface street intersections and freeway corridors with a rating of A to F--with A representing free flow and F signifying near gridlock.

But congestion is so overwhelming on some roads that traffic experts this year have added new levels of the F grade: F(a), F(b), F(c) and F(d). The longer an intersection is clogged to the F level, the lower its grade, ranging from less than one hour on a stretch of freeway--an F(a)--to more than three hours within a peak-traffic period, which gets a F(d).

The report card for 1992, formally known as the Congested Corridor Action Plan, concludes that countywide, 34% of surface street intersections have standstill delays of more than one minute and 75% of freeways have a peak-hour average speed of less than 20 m.p.h.--widely used benchmarks of traffic flow.

Because the 1991 analysis did not include intersections, transportation officials said it is difficult to compare the 1992 report with it.

However, traffic experts from the California Department of Transportation said that at least on the freeways in Los Angeles County, traffic has increased generally from 1% to 2% between 1991 and 1992.

The report card, an idea proposed in 1991 by Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman, a member of the new Metropolitan Transportation Authority, identifies the 11 most congested corridors, gives updates on traffic reduction strategies implemented since 1991 and recommends new options for combatting congestion.

The 11 congested corridors include the busiest freeways and surface streets from Santa Monica to San Bernardino to San Pedro. They are generally the most heavily used commuter routes and include some of the most active business areas.

Despite the failing grades on many freeways and intersections, Edelman gave the MTA's plans for combatting traffic congestion a good review.