A study released Tuesday shows Sacramento area drivers waste 41 hours each year crawling through traffic on the way to and from their jobs. 10 years ago it was 35 hours, according to the Texas Traffic Institute.

David Shrank is the study’s co-author. He says when tallied up, traffic delays cost a lot of money.

"In the Sacramento area the sort of cumulative price tag is about, just under 30 million gallons of wasted fuel and when you want to know what that means for an individual motorist, that’s about $750 a year."  

Mike McKeever heads SACOG, Sacramento’s regional transportation planning agency. He admits congestion is getting worse. 

"It’s more time than anybody wants to be spending but it’s a lot less than people spend in San Francisco, LA, San Diego. It’s important for people to understand that we’re determined to find a way to halt that trend of ever increasing every year you have to spend more of your time in congestion." 

McKeever says that includes building more housing near jobs in the downtown area, beefing up public transit and creating more pedestrian and bicycle friendly infrastructure. Los Angeles has the worst congestion, delaying drivers an average of 72 hours a year