Even if they had the power, or will, governments in ostensibly free nations shouldn't be forcing their population into a form of transport, just as they shouldn't be forcing their population into specific jobs, specific homes, or specific religions.
The reason traffic gets so bad during rush hour is a simple case of supply and demand: limited supply road of space, lots of demand, and most importantly, the space is effectively free. If cities charged something approaching market rate for the space, traffic gridlock would disappear.
Of course, this is impractical to do in most US cities, because of a lack of alternative ways to get around. Thus, the first thing that needs to happen is to provide more options; once that's done, you can work on incentivizing people to take the methods that can support more people.
My guess is that this is for the same reason as the fact that housing prices have gotten crazy high in London over the last decade: demand has continued to outpace supply (and in this case, the congestion charge). I mean, you can always suppress traffic if you're willing to raise the price high enough, right? It's just that politically, that can be a hard thing to do.
> the solution will have to be something like automated self driving cars integrated into a conveyor belt like system, which incentivise ride-sharing.
Sure, Minority Report-style traffic systems are probably a good idea in the long run (although that kind of thing is obviously a very long ways out). We'll still have to make investments in other, denser modes of transportation, though, as well as market-oriented policies like parking fees and congestion charges.
I have to admit that governments force us to do all kinds of things, and I accept that, mostly. For me the debate is about which things the government can mandate.
If turning three out of four lanes on LA's stretch of the 405 freeway into HOV lanes meant that commute times from the Valley to Culver City became a reliable 20 minutes, I think I might be happier.
Having government impose some new orderly process on a chaotic and inefficient transportation market (i.e. freeways) is not necessarily worse than the status quo.
LA is grappling with a serious mess. It's affecting the business climate significantly. People can't reliably and predictably get to their place of work. The unpleasant side effects are already here.