Austin traffic isn't the worst there is on an absolute scale. But it's frustrating because it's so much worse than it should be for a city of this size.

The people in charge of it seem to be kind of checked out and ineffectual. They don't always even try to solve problems, and when they do, they do stuff that doesn't seem to be thought out very well.

A well-known example is I-35. It is a huge pain point and has been for decades. A few years back, they started talking about doing something to solve that, and rather than trying to improve I-35 itself, the idea of building a parallel toll road really far outside of town was pitched as the solution. The toll road (SH 130) was built, but surprise, nobody wants to drive on a road in the middle of nowhere. The toll road was used so little it went through bankruptcy, but more importantly, all this didn't help fix I-35.