Most academics in the field of infrastructure would acknowledge that, for a first world country, the UK has piss-poor infrastructure full stop whether you're talking about transport, communications, utilities, education, healthcare or whatever. Road traffic congestion is widely recognised as a huge driver of the UK's terrible productivity, which impacts us all in our paychecks.
We're in Greater Manchester halfway between the A6 and A580, two pretty major routes into the city centre. The authorities decreed some time ago that the three-lane A580 should lose a third of its capacity to make way for a bus lane. This is fine, except that the 'express' buses using this route start in the back of beyond and at times when normal people want to get to work are already completely full by the time they reach the park and ride tucked under the M61/M60 junction. The set up is great if you can get on the bus in Leigh, not so great if you've already driven down from the sticks outside Chorley or Bolton or live within the M60.
We could take the train, I guess, but the local station has no parking, no bike lockers (just two - a whole TWO - bike hoops on the pavement outside), is accessed via nearly 50 steps (no lift etc) and is served by Northern Rail so for much of the last 18 months basically hasn't been served at all.
But not everyone commutes into the city centre either. Anyone not wanting to, or who for whatever reason wants to get from the A6 to the A580, has to use a vast network of narrow residential streets replete with parked cars, speed bumps, mini-roundabouts, schools, and so on. These rat-runs are carrying trunk road levels of traffic in places and are barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass at anything other than their widest points. Apart from masochists and the suicidal I cannot think of anyone who would willingly cycle along them, and when they do they create more bottlenecks. All it needs is one set of road works, or even a lane closure six miles away on the M60, and we get completely gridlocked assuming we're not already gridlocked at one of the mini-roundabouts of the type where if you want to turn right then you can wait ten minutes or more, holding up the rest of the straight-ahead traffic behind you because - get this - the mini-roundabout has been fitted with a choke point for "traffic calming."
To take DD to nursery (no bus service, naturally) is a two mile journey which involves driving two sides of a triangle. We can do it in seven minutes, but we have also given up and come home after an hour of sitting in stationary traffic.
One of the big problems, as a pp alludes, is junction designs and things which are no longer fit for purpose. To compound the problem, we are at a place where the borders of three local authorities meet, and none of them are willing to pay for works to improve their junctions to relieve another borough's congestion which is largely composed of through traffic from out of the area anyway!