A new study from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute reveals New York taking the number four spot as one of the top five cities in America with the worst congestion. NY1's Rocco Vertuccio filed this report.

"It gets worse and worse as the day goes by," says Mark Chastney, who spends most of his day driving around the city, delivering supplies to stores.

Traffic gridlock makes even a simple delivery difficult.

"So I've got to go swing around and I've got to go back to a store down there. Probably takes me half an hour, 45 minutes to get there," he says.

A new study by the Texas A&M Traffic Institute shows traffic congestion added 74 hours in driving time to the average commute in the region last year. That puts New York in fourth place on the list of cities with the worst gridlock behind Washington DC, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

"It's horrible. Everywhere you go there's traffic," one driver says. "Yeah, we're always late. We got to leave earlier. It stinks."

The study found the problem is so bad, commuters now need to plan twice as much travel time to get anywhere on time. Nationwide, the delay per commuter is more than twice what it was in 1982.

Driver: "It's a nightmare sometimes."

Vertuccio: "How much do you have to plan ahead to get somewhere on time?"

Driver: "I usually... 30 minutes."

There's more congestion because Americans are driving more as a result of relatively cheap gas and the economic recovery. All those traffic delays comes with a price—$960 in lost time and fuel per commuter last year. For some New Yorkers, even planning ahead doesn't help .

"I try to listen to the alerts but sometimes they're not even accurate," one driver says.

The report comes as Congress debates the next long-term highway funding bill. Advocates say the numbers are further proof the U.S. must invest more on roads and transportation projects. In the meantime some New Yorkers have found their own solution.

"It's not bad. You've just got to have patience," says one driver. 

Authors of this study also say employers can do more to help by giving employees more flexibility in where, when and how they work , for example allowing more employees to work from home if possible.