As American cities go, Austin, Texas is one of the great success stories. It's lauded for its vibrant creative culture, has low unemployment, and is exploding population.

Austin also has - believe it or not - only one freeway running through the city. With the suburbs filling up along with the city, rush hour gridlock has become a serious, serious problem.

The conventional answer is to build more freeways. But according to researchers at Texas A&M, even if you were to build more freeways in Austin, traffic will still slow to an absolute standstill at peak times.

According to the computer models researchers used, the only reliable way to reduce congestion is for more people to move to the center. And roughly 40% of the population would have to do that to bring commutes back down to reasonable lengths.

Turns out you can't have your cake and eat it, too. You can't live in McMansion Sprawville and have fast commutes.

Don't believe me? Read the NPR piece:http://www.npr.org/2013/12/17/248757...traffic-tangle