I don't know if this tip works for every city, but when you find yourself having to face traffic before the peak of rush-hour it's actually a better idea to take the axis roads than the main highways.
Why? Simple: not as many people want to drive below 50mph, so fewer people actually resort to them. TTwTT
Just today, as I was driving my sister and I home, we looked at one of the main highways that normally would've taken us a shorter amount of time to reach our destination and found it on the verge of becomming bumper-to-bumper traffic. As I mentioned in my introduction into this world, I'm basically driving a tank around, and I don't feel all that comfortable when I see a huge amount of cars huddled around me. Seeing that, I decided that it would be easier to take said axis road home.
In the end this move not only turned out to be safer, it also resulted in us getting home faster than the ones on the highway (and yes, I was following the 45mph speedlimit).
That's all for now. Later! 
