[zootam]

>but it ain't the core problem

What do you consider to be the core problem?

I think the root cause is expensive housing.

Increasing throughput on the highways often only lets more people get to the same bottleneck in the same time. To actually alleviate that problem, the throughput of any bottlenecks would need to increase as well. Usually, that's in a highly desirable and expensive area.

Destroying much of the highly desirable and expensive area and covering it with highways and parking lots is one way to solve the problem, but is obviously a terrible idea.