And that's because Austin is a much smaller city. Of course traffic is much easier if you have 15x fewer people going anywhere. If you go by administrative borders, Tokyo is roughly 2.5x larger by land area, with 5.5x higher population density. And if you look at the metropolitan areas, Tokyo is 20% larger by land area and has at least 13x higher population density.

So don’t build such dense cities. America has plenty of land.

I'm from Los Angeles so excuse my hardy laughter. I'm sure Austin is great but that commute time will surely balloon as the population density continues to rise. Austin has ~3000/sq mi vs Tokyo's ~16,000/sq mi.

Why should population density continue to rise?

Have you ever flown over Texas?

Ever driven through the California central valley? Just because the state has space doesn't mean cities don't get dense.