The maddening puzzle of backed-up traffic and public transit transitions is burning up more than a week of local commuters’ lives every year in addition to the fumes of gas and frustration, and the state itself is stuck in the middle of a pileup of overdue transportation improvement projects.

“The region has one of the nation’s worst commutes, according to one national survey, with congestion keeping drivers on the road for an additional 48 hours a year — more than a whole work week — traveling to and from work,” a recent feature on Philly.com stated.

And local employees have a front seat in that miserable reality. Vanguard’s Chester County offices alone draw in 11,700 commuters, and even those who bypass the stop-and-go highways need the help of a company shuttle to get to work from the Paoli train station. The station in Exton has no bus stop at all, and only 11 percent of bus stops in the county have both a shelter and sidewalk.

“Now … people are living everywhere and working everywhere, and that’s a much harder market to serve with public transportation,” Chester County Transportation Services Director Randy Waltermyer said in the article.

A big part of the problem is the modern worker’s mass exodus from Philadelphia to the suburbs; roads and public transit were never intended to see so much traffic.

“Saddled with an infrastructure built for an era when Philadelphia was the employment nexus, planners and transportation officials are engaging in a profound game of catch-up,” the article noted.

For starters, Route 202 is being widened and state officials plan to eventually widen Route 30 from Thorndale to East Caln. Also, a new Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority rail line is being put in from King of Prussia to Norristown, and there’s the coming Wawa extension from the Media-Elwyn line.

But it will take years to begin to alleviate the commuting headaches.

“Nobody could imagine the volume of motor traffic,” Chester County 2020 Executive Director William Stevens said.

Read much more about the commuting journey and answers to how it got so bad on Philly.com here.