In this case terrible traffic is the result of buding a ton of crooked relatively narrow roads without any rhyme or reason. Family with children _cannot exist_ in most of the US without a car. Even in Austin itself if you don't have a car everything is just too far apart, and you could spend an hour or more fetching groceries quite easily. I actually forgot my driver's license at home and while it was being fedexed to me I got to experience the car-less Austin lifestyle. Let me tell you authoritatively, you wouldn't want to live like that. But at the same time if you live in Austin itself you don't want to bother with a car either, there's relatively little parking, so you'll really be struggling to find a spot once COVID subsides. I've seen the same deliberate shrinkage of parking happen in other "progressive" cities. Nobody gives a shit if you got kids and need a car. Another thing that Austin shares with other progressive cities is its massive and growing homeless population, though I must also say that even the homeless people are nicer there than, say, in SF or Seattle. At least I haven't seen anyone shoot up heroin in public or shit on the sidewalk.

SF seems to be telling me to give up my car, but that's a non-starter unless Muni gets about 500% better (higher frequency, more coverage, faster routes).

Even in Manhattan, where transit is pretty decent, the only reason why transit is faster (sometimes) is because traffic is terrible all the time.