The fair place to meet is El Paso, TX — the city closest to the midpoint of New Orleans and San Diego. From the farther side that’s about 20 hr 34 min of driving.
Recommended midpoint
El Paso, TX
From New Orleans
20 hr 34 min
981 mi to El Paso
From San Diego
13 hr 9 min
627 mi to El Paso
San Diego has the shorter trip; the split is off by about 7 hr 25 min. The alternatives below can even it out. New Orleans and San Diego are about 1,606 miles apart.
New Orleans and San Diego are about 1,606 miles apart by road. Split the difference and you arrive near El Paso, the city closest to the halfway point between them. That puts roughly 20 hr 34 min of driving on the New Orleans side and 13 hr 9 min on the San Diego side — the fairest single meeting point among the cities near the middle.
Over this distance most people will fly rather than drive the whole way. El Paso still makes a fair, central place for New Orleans and San Diego to converge, splitting the travel instead of asking one side to cross the country.
If El Paso doesn't have what you're after, Albuquerque and San Antonio are also close to the midpoint and worth a look — each keeps the drive reasonably balanced between New Orleans and San Diego.
El Paso is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States. It is the 22nd-most populous city in the U.S., sixth-most populous city in Texas, and the most populous city in West Texas with a population of 678,815 at the 2020 census. Read more →
New Orleans is a consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. Read more →
San Diego is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. It is the eighth-most populous city in the U.S. Read more →
City descriptions adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA); photos via Wikimedia Commons, credited above.
Estimates use straight-line distance and typical road speeds; real drive times vary with route and traffic.