I've played with Cities: Skylines off and on many times over the years and often do give up in frustration with endless traffic problems, but I think it's down

I've played with Cities: Skylines off and on many times over the years and often do give up in frustration with endless traffic problems, but I think it's down to two main things: one, traffic management is very much "endgame" type content, as you can build a nice self-sufficient little zen garden community without really worrying about it much. But to get big cities it must be dealt with. And two, once you've already built a city, it's way harder to implement good traffic flow. This is painfully evident all the time in the real world. Now I use a mod to unlock all the map tiles (actually, the entire map) at game start, and I build specifically around my envisioned future transportation needs. It's still a challenge, and I highly recommend the traffic management mod mentioned elsewhere in these threads, but it is not an insurmountable one.