Like virtually all other metropolitan areas in the developed world, Texas metropolitan areas are struggling to control increasing street and highway traffic volumes. Transit, and particularly rail, is often cited as a strategy for reducing traffic congestion. Unfortunately, transit’s effectiveness in reducing traffic congestion is limited to downtown corridors. This is as much so in areas with extensive rail systems as in areas with little or no rail, such as the large Texas metropolitan areas. The only location to which convenient, quick, no-transfer transit service (bus or rail) is provided is to downtown. But downtowns comprise, on average, 10 percent of employment. The distribution of employment is crucial to traffic congestion, because work trips during the morning and evening peak hours are the primary cause of such congestion.