The demand is constant and does not change. You can only shuffle it around. You have a few choices:
1. Add lanes. This gives people the option to move to the suburbs with a long commute.
2. Build housing in urban areas. This gives people the option to live close to work without a commute.
3. Add public transportation connects the suburbs to the cities.
4. Massive homeless problem. This is because people cannot commute from the suburbs and cannot pay rent in the cities.
The government has the power to add lanes at the expense of smaller, more dangerous shoulders and medians. But the ability to add lanes only extends as far as the shoulders. For the most part, California has run out of shoulder in urban areas.
The government does not have the power to build housing because of NIMBYs.
Buses don't solve the problem of commuting between the suburbs and the cities. If you have to sit in traffic anyway, people will sit in traffic in their car. The government doesn't have the power to build light rail because that means tearing town existing structures, and again -- NIMBYs.
So massive homeless problem it is.