The future. (Photo by philliefan99)

The Washington area’s roadways are so clogged, that people who take 30 minute drives to work spend about 80 extra hours in their cars every year because of the bad traffic, according to a report by TomTom, a manufacturer of GPS devices.

In fact, roads in the D.C. region are the third-most jammed, trailing only those in Los Angeles and San Francisco, TomTom found in its quarterly study of gridlock and traffic patterns in major U.S. cities. On average, rush hour drives in Washington take 26 percent longer than during non-peak hours. The results of TomTom’s analysis were reported by the Washington Examiner.

TomTom’s report comes on the heels of a study released earlier this week by researchers at George Mason University that projected that the rate at which people commute by automobile instead of other modes of transportation will not change over the next 30 years.

A spokesperson for AAA Mid-Atlantic told the Examiner that Washington’s ever-present traffic jams are accredited to a robust economy:

“This report just reaffirms what every driver in our region experiences every day, and it’s not just one of our routes, it’s all over our region,” said AAA Mid-Atlantic’s Lon Anderson. “And it’s simply because we have over the years been very fortunate and have had a strong economy. We’ve added business and homes and we’ve not added roads. And only occasionally have we added more mass transit.”

So, next time you find yourself stuck in traffic, just remind yourself that jobs are being created!

Really, though, the findings that D.C.’s roads and highways are constantly congested are promising to people at the Coalition for Smarter Growth. The group’s director told the Examiner that more traffic jams just underscores the importance of increasing public transit, cycling and other non-automobile modes of transportation.