I don’t live in Austin, but have, oh, maybe 100 hours driving experience there: Even when traffic is moving quickly, or perhaps especially when traffic is heavy but moving quickly, is a quite, uh, an “interesting” experience. Miami or Chicago (and I have many hundreds if not more hours driving in the latter area, over my life) is much easier.
I never did Austin enough to remember whether I wanted the high road or the low one, and the choices weren’t marked far enough in advance to make an informed choice.
I am convinced that every traffic engineering program in the state should be shut down, and all of the engineers at TxDot should be fired. It doesn’t take much driving in other states to realize that the basic design fundamentals in Texas are just wrong, and are totally lacking in simple common sense.