According to new data from the Census Bureau, 600,000 Americans have commutes to work that are longer than 90 minutes and 50 miles. But those workers with longer commutes are far more likely than other workers to either use public transit or carpool. In fact, nearly 4 in 5 workers who work outside of the home drive to work alone:

According to Out-of-State and Long Commutes: 2011, 23.0 percent of workers with long commutes (60 minutes or more) use public transit, compared with 5.3 percent for all workers. Only 61.1 percent of workers with long commutes drove to work alone, compared with 79.9 percent for all workers who worked outside the home.

“The average travel time for workers who commute by public transportation is higher than that of workers who use other modes. For some workers, using transit is a necessity, but others simply choose a longer travel time over sitting in traffic,” said Brian McKenzie, a Census Bureau statistician and author of the brief.

Rail travel accounted for 11.8 percent of workers with long commutes, and other forms of public transportation accounted for 11.2 percent.

As a report from Texas A&M noted, workers in America sat in traffic for a collective 5.5 billion hours in 2011. And congestion in major cities has gotten significantly worse in recent decades, as this chart shows:

Public transit use has increased steadily in recent years, but investment in it has not. Instead, it has plateaued, leaving transit agencies to handle more riders with no new resources:

Republicans want to make this problem worse by diverting funding meant for mass transit to highway construction. But that would simply exacerbate the already existing incentives to drive to work alone, rather than adopting a different mode of transport.

The 5.5 billion hours Americans sat in traffic in 2011 cost the country a whopping $121 billion, according to an Urban Mobility Report from Texas A&M. Not surprisingly, the most congested cities are also some of the most populated, including Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco-Oakland, New York-Newark, Boston, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia and Seattle:

Consumers bear much of the cost in time and gas, with the wasted fuel totaling 2.9 billion gallons — enough to fill the New Orleans Superdome four times over. The total costs are up $1 billion from the year before, which translates to $818 per U.S. commuter. Commuters must shoulder the cost of time wasted, too, since many need to allot a full hour for a trip that should take 20 minutes.

There are massive pollution costs to this much traffic as well: Traffic congestion adds 56 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, or 380 pounds per commuter.

The obvious fix is more funding for infrastructure, and the researchers recommend prioritizing public transit. In the most congested cities, an increasing number of Americans rely on public transit. However, Republicans have repeatedly sought to cut mass transit funding, while public investment has plunged since the recession. The nation’s growing infrastructure deficit currently stands at $1.6 trillion.

According to a new report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, the last few years have seen the first drop in miles driven annually by Americans since World War II, in large part thanks to a reduction in driving by young people:

From World War II until just a few years ago, the number of miles driven annually on America’s roads steadily increased. Then, at the turn of the century, something changed: Americans began driving less. By 2011, the average American was driving 6 percent fewer miles per year than in 2004.

The trend away from driving has been led by young people. From 2001 to 2009, the average annual number of vehicle miles traveled by young people (16 to 34-year-olds) decreased from 10,300 miles to 7,900 miles per capita — a drop of 23 percent.

“America’s transportation preferences appear to be changing. Our elected officials need to make transportation decisions based on the real needs of Americans in the 21st century,” said Phineas Baxandall, Senior Transportation Analyst for U.S.PIRG Education Fund. However, it’s quite clear that House Republicans in Congress aren’t quite caught up to speed.

The House GOP has been squabbling for months over a bill to reauthorize the nation’s transportation funding, with more conservative members of the caucus wanting to gut funding and send it back to the states to deal with. Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), in the transportation bill that he proposed, called for ending the government’s dedicated stream of funding for mass transit, and instead implementing a cockamamie scheme that the Congressional Budget Office said would cover just five percent of mass transit needs.

The New York Times called the GOP’s plan “uniquely terrible,” and as the research organization PolicyLink found, it would have a disproportionately negative impact on minorities, who depend upon mass transit in greater numbers. The Senate, meanwhile, has had none of these problems, passing a bipartisan transportation bill that the House GOP refuses to take up.