Yeah, it’s still pretty bad. (Photo by philliefan99)

Last October, traffic in the D.C. area ranked as the third worst in the United States. Then, in February, another research group rated it as the absolute worst in the nation.

Well, now there’s yet another nationwide traffic survey out, and on this one, Washington features the country’s ninth-worst traffic. According to data compiled by INRIX, a traffic research firm, drivers in and around D.C. lost an average of 41 hours of their lives last year because they were sitting in traffic.

Local commuters also averaged about 34.5 minutes for driving to work, the second-worst commute of any major metropolitan area after New York. But INRIX did find that the D.C. area is ahead of most places in reliance on public transportation. Only 76 percent of those surveyed drove a personal vehicle to work, while nearly 15 percent used public transit.

And even if D.C. is still a hellish place to commute according to TomTom, a manufacturer of GPS devices that ranked the area third-worst, and the Urban Mobility Institute, which put Washington at the very bottom, it’s improving in the eyes of INRIX. Last year’s INRIX Scorecard ranked Washington as having the sixth-worst traffic in the nation.

So, there’s that.

Overall, Los Angeles was rated the worst city for drivers, followed by Honolulu; San Francisco; Austin, Texas; New York; Bridgeport, Conn.; San Jose, Calif.; and Seattle. Boston placed 10th.