Much better mileage on the freeway than city....what am I doing wrong

Ok, sure but I don't think it matters who pays for the lunch, it still paid for.

 

Well, I suspect @crazyirv has run screaming into the forest by now.

But if you're still watching this, Irv, just ignore Frank and listen up to @ChapmanF. He works on these cars, has a ton of experience, and his explanation in post #9 is one of the best I've ever seen.

In addition to the more or less uncontrollable traffic situations discussed here, one thing you can control (traffic permitting) is how late and hard you brake. Most drivers want to maximize the time they sit in stopped traffic, so they stay on the gas as long as they can and then brake hard at the last moment. If you know you're going to have to stop anyway and no one is pushing you, get your foot off of the gas pedal. That makes a HUGE difference.

 

Well just to keep it simple...
Is I would expect the OP is NOT doing anything wrong.

When I owned my Prius, I typically got better freeway mileage than city, despite what the EPA numbers say.
It would vary, depending on exact situation. Like coming into an urban environment AFTER being on the freeway, with a fully warmed up engine and a hybrid battery on the plus side of charge, THEN I'd get fantastic city mileage.
But as a Daily Driver, my Prius always really did do better on the freeway than in long term city driving.

What I judged my Prius on, as far as "Is it Working?" or "Am I doing it right?" was tank to tank, bi-weekly, even monthy MPG average. I got so I really didn't pay too much attention to what the Prius said my MPG was, after either a specific stretch driving on the freeway, or in the city.

 

Several points to remember:

(*) You don't really need any regen to beat the EPA rating. This is especially noticeable in highway driving, where great distances are commonly driven without any regen at all;

(*) The competitive hypermilers back in the Hurricane Katerina -- Gas Price Spike era, who commonly achieved scores well above 100 MPG, were minimizing or eliminating regeneration, instead making best use of no-regeneration minimum-drag glides;

(*) Pulse-and-Glide works exceptionally well, proportionately much better than in any Prius, on old era traditional non-hybrids that were not geared tall enough for efficiency. And they didn't have any regeneration capability at all. Nada. Today's hybrids hadn't even been invented then.

(*) In a Prius, Pulse-and-glide works best below the ICE auto-stop speed, when the ICE can quit spinning completely during glides. Above that threshold speed (~42 mph in Gen2, 46 mpg in Gen3, I don't know Gen1's speed), there is far less to be gained because Toyota's HSD system and the Atkinson-cycle engine have already harvested most of the potential still-spinning-ICE gains (compared to the old non-hybrid era) by other means. And with Gen3 having a BSFC chart that is nearly flat down to almost idle RPM, it has even less to be gained from P&G than does a Gen2.