I know! We build more roads and then there will be room for all the cars and the problem will be solved. This is the most rational solution to the problem.
Building more roads will work. Induced traffic is an evil lie peddled by socialist hippies who hate freedom.
Even in cities which are considered to have exceptional public mass transit, like Tokyo, rush hour on trains is awful. Not much you can really do about it from an infrastructure view point since trains are already arriving every 2 mins at peak times and they're still crammed full.
Before COVID hit, the Tozai line (which is the most crowded) was experimenting with bribing people with free lunch vouchers if they rode earlier or later than rush hour.
It's a shame that COVID ruined the results of that experiment, because there were rumors of the govt planning to give incentives to offices to get them to shift their starting times away from the ubiquitous 9am.
Yeah, but cars are a different breed there as far as regulations and cost go.
That was my point. You change little else in your typical western nation (which seems what the comment is aiming at with easy regulation), i.e. you keep subsidizing the car to no end at every opportunity and stretching traffic out more will do nothing than get people back into the car because of cost/time/convenience mixed with a good bit of brainworms.
Changing nothing else it's a policy aimed at making it nicer to go by car and it will function as such.
Well I didn't say that this was about a "typical western nation" and even if we are strictly talking about the West for some reason this would still be a good policy in large parts of Western Europe which already have good mass transit and aren't as reliant on cars.
Also, I never said that this would be a change that would take place in a vacuum, so I don't see why you're assuming that it should. My original post refers to "easy policies", plural.
Lastly, I don't think you're accounting for the increased draw of public transport if people could be more confident that they could sit down on a bus or a train for their commutes, or at least not be packed in like canned fish.