Houston traffic jams happen not only on the roads but also on the rails, and drivers stuck on the streets know it.

“Well, it’s kinda late, but I wish that they would kinda had some overpasses over here, probably, you know?" one driver said. "Probably would’ve made a difference, you know?”         

Maybe a big difference.

All that time we sit waiting on trains costs a lot of money.

A new Texas Department of Transportation study obtained by 11 News estimates rail crossing delays in the Houston area will cost us $2.6 billion during the next 20 y years.

“Gridlock: That’s where you’re headed eventually,” Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said. “No question about it.”

We already have about 1,200 crossings where trains bring traffic to a stop. And cars and trucks already cross Houston area railroad tracks about 5 million times a day.

So this report recommends as many as 55 new overpasses or underpasses, costing about $808 million.

But it also recommends closing as many as 63 crossings and rerouting street traffic at a cost of $5.2 million.

"The total report? You’re probably talking about $4 billion, and that’s not going to get done, but we need to get started on it now so that we don’t look up 10 years from now and we have this city that’s just so congested with the freight rails still in it," Emmett said.

Whatever happens, Houston’s bound to see more trains and more traffic.