No, it wasn't your imagination. Traffic hasn't been quite so hellish since the economy imploded, but now that things are picking up, you can expect congestion to increase as well. It's already gotten so bad that the average American spent 34 hours sitting in traffic last year – and paid $808 for the privilege.

So say the brains at the Texas Transportation Institute in their annual Urban Mobility Report (.pdf). The study found traffic in 2008 was better than it had been in at least a decade, but the stop-and-go grind returned in 2009 as the economy improved.

In compiling the report, the researchers used real-time traffic data for 439 urban areas to determine how far we're going and how long it's taking us to get there. The bottom line? Gridlock forced us to spend an additional 4.8 billion hours in traffic in 2009, wasting an additional 3.9 billion gallons of fuel. All told we blew $115 billion in traffic last year when you consider things like wasted fuel, lost work time and shipping delays.

It's hard to put those numbers in context because they're so damn big, but the researchers break it down for us.

You folks in Chicago and Washington had it worst, wasting on average 70 hours sitting in traffic last year. That's more than twice the national average of 34 hours. For the sake of comparison, we spent an average of 14 hours in traffic in 1982 (when the institute started issuing the report), and it cost us $24 billion in today's dollars.

Breaking it down further, traffic congestion cost the average commuter $808 last year, up from an inflation-adjusted $351 in 1982.

Rounding out the top ten most hellish commutes were:

Los Angeles/Long Beach: $1,464 / 63 hours

Houston: $1,322 / 58 hours

Baltimore: $1,218 / 50 hours

San Francisco: $1,112 / 49 hours

Boston: $1,112 / 48 hours

Dallas/Fort Worth: $1,077 / 48 hours

Denver: $1,057 / 47 hours

Seattle: $1,056 / 44 hours

The researchers see a small silver lining in this, though: Increasing traffic is a sign of increasing prosperity. "The tie between the economy and congestion is not unexpected," Tim Lomax, a research engineer with the institute, told NPR.

It could have been worse. The study found public transportation eased the strain. We'd have lost another 785 million hours it weren't for the nation's bus and rail systems (such as they are).

The researchers offer many of the solutions you'd expect from a transportation institute:

Maximize use of the system we have by, for example, quickly removing stalled cars.

Increase capacity – i.e., build more roads – and expand public transit.

Change our traffic patterns by carpooling, commuting at off-peak periods and telecommuting.

Provide toll roads, carpool lanes and other choices for faster, more reliable trips.

Diversify land-development patterns to make walking, biking and mass transit more practical.

Realize that traffic in urban areas is going to suck, but doesn't have to be bad all day.

Infrastructure advocates were quick to seize on the report as further proof that the nation's infrastructure is, in a word, a mess and we need to seriously reconsider how we spend our transportation funds.

“The Urban Mobility Report is an important reminder that too many Americans are stuck without good options for efficient, safe and affordable travel in our cities and towns," James Corless, director of Transportation for America, said in a statement. "It is especially timely as Congress prepares to reset priorities for investing our transportation trust fund. However, we must note that flaws in the UMR's analysis could lead to faulty conclusions about what the report indicates."

Corless' biggest gripe is with the suggestion that we pave our way out of this mess. "American taxpayers," he says, "will never stand for being asked to turn over their wallets and their neighborhoods in order to build that kind of highway capacity."

Better, he says, to fix what we've got, invest in technology that can better manage traffic, increase rail and rapid bus service in the most congested corridors, and link transportation funding to smart growth.

We're already seeing steps in that direction. The federal Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery discretionary grant program – aka Tiger I and Tiger II – is a deliberate step away from our outdated "pour more pavement" approach. It is an effort to bring reason to transportation funding.

That's not all. Last year, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood leveled the playing field for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists when allocating funding for transportation projects. The Obama Administration has been pushing for healthier communities with the creation of "active transportation systems" that include walking and biking. And don’t forget the data that show more people are biking to work.

The fact is, 60 percent of the world's population will live in urban areas by 2030, when, by some estimates, there will be 2 billion cars on the road. That will require – no, it will demand – that we embrace multimodal, not car-centric, transportation systems.

Photo: biblicone/Flickr