Lived in one, now a resident in the other, Austin's downtown doesn't even compare to the downtown of the other major cities in its own state, if you even only talked about public transit. Going east to west is a nightmare of transfers, going north to south (in non-COVID times) is a nightmare of sitting on either Guadalupe for an hour to go two miles or sitting on Lamar for an hour to go two miles. And that's IF your CapMetro bus is running on time that day.

You'll do marginally better driving your own car if you catch that section of Guadalupe going south right at the perfect time when the lights slowly cascade to green as you approach Riverside.

(Course the tradeoff here in Chicago is looping the block endlessly looking for a parking spot, but in non pandemic times, I'd trade the CTA for CapMetro in a heartbeat)