Day in and day out, millions of people across the United States hop in and out of cars, subways and buses traveling between their homes and places of work.

Specifically in the New York City metro area, commuters have the unique experience of biding their time by waiting in sweltering underground subway stations and sitting in traffic on congested highways and streets. It’s a well-known part of our daily routine that can cause stress, anxiety and sometimes, even our jobs.

In a report from EducatedDriver.org, researchers crunched numbers of 1,000 U.S. cities and found that Americans lose on average 408 days of their life commuting. That’s a little over ONE YEAR sitting in your car, on a subway, in an Uber/Lyft or on a bus that could be spent with family and friends, starting a business, going for a run or doing something else that brings you joy and happiness.

For commuters in our region, these times are another reason why it is so imperative for a solid plan on congestion pricing to be passed, subway and bus service to be improved and even the Gateway Project to be implemented so that we’re spending less time on the roads and rails, and more time with our family and friends.

To find these figures, EduactedDriver.org used data from the U.S. Census to calculate the average daily round trip commute times based on the average number of days that an American works a year (about 250 days including vacation and sick leave.)

I took a look at the interactive map and pulled the data specifically for the New York- New Jersey-Connecticut region and wasn’t surprised to find that our region’s findings are the highest in the country.

Check out the staggering times for our region below, and click here to explore the map for times in other parts of the country.