Boy, Los Angeles, you must really love your cars. You pay dearly to drive them.

Some have claimed that car culture is dead because the new generation likes smartphones better. New numbers released by traffic information provider Inrix suggest there are plenty of wheels still clogging our roads.

See also: You're Paying $2,500 a Year to Drive on L.A.'s Crappy Roads

The firm says our national-champion, congestion-related delays take $5,700 a year out of the wallet of the average Angeleno motorist. That's a whopping one-fifth the total cost of congestion for drivers nationwide.

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Congestion costs the average American motorist $1,700 a year, Inrix says.

The numbers are based on “wasted time and fuel as well as indirect costs to U.S. households resulting from businesses passing these same costs on to consumers in the form of higher prices for goods and services,” it said in a statement.

That's a lot of cash, but it's only going to get worse. The company says that by 2030 those costs will be $8,500 a year for the average L.A. driver.

Ouch? Just think, this is on top of whatever you pay to own, maintain and fuel your car.

And, as we reported last month, the national transportation group TRIP says it costs local motorists $2,458 a year for …

 … extra vehicle operating costs (VOC) as a result of driving on roads in need of repair, lost time and fuel due to congestion-related delays, and the cost of traffic crashes in which roadway features likely were a contributing factor.

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That adds up to $8,158 a year in congestion and bad-road costs for each of us who drives regularly, if these numbers are accurate.

Per capita (individual) income in L.A. County is $27,900 a year. Traffic and bad roads, then, could take almost one-third of an average Angeleno's pay.

Inrix says congestion, up 10 percent this year, is responsible for a $23.2 billion hit to the local economy. The average driver wastes 65 hours a year stuck in traffic, the firm says.

Kevin Foreman, an Inrix general manager, says:

As the economy grows and more people live in urban areas, greater demand is placed on our roads. Until we evolve our approach to how we manage our transportation networks, the individual and societal costs are only going to get worse.

Send feedback and tips to the author. Follow Dennis Romero on Twitter at @dennisjromero. Follow LA Weekly News on Twitter at @laweeklynews.

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