The underlying problem is basic geometry: cars are the least spatially efficient form of transportation in common use - you need something like 140 square feet to transport on average just over one person, plus a similar amount of space for storage. That can work somewhere unpopular but the math just doesn’t work in a city core where you don’t have that much space unless you bulldozed all of the buildings. Even if they did something phenomenally expensive and unpleasant like creating multilevel streets those would fill up quickly because if traffic ever improved, more people would start driving all the way in.

1) More people start to use the road, which can actually increase total commute time (Braess's paradox).

2) It removes room for the actual city. The city becomes more spread out, and people have to travel farther to get to their destinations!

Think about this: do you want to be encouraging other people to create more traffic along your commute? No way! You want everyone else off your roads, somehow get them to start biking or take the subway. And the best way to do that is to replace a couple lanes with bus/bike/streetcar lanes.

And NYC residents who work in NJ pay income tax to the state of NJ as well as to NY state and NYC.

it's one of the reasons why I left!