Even if you build more roads and better access more people will then decided its worth it to drive.
It's sort of like roads fill up until people decide the commute by car takes too long.
Boston spent a ton of money upgrading their road infrastructure, but more people just decided to drive to work since the traffic was bearable then.
Unfortunately, there just aren't a lot of alternatives to driving. North American cities are the product of a post-war car lifestyle. The price of housing in the city cores have gone up dramatically, so people got pushed further out into the suburbs, where they could get better value for their money. Of course this required buying a car.
The problem is that public transit was never built to adequately serve these suburbs. It either doesn't run regularly, costs too much (often more than just driving), takes longer, or doesn't serve your area. Usually a combination of several of those.
In my case, I live on one suburban community but commute to another. I work off hours so it takes me 20min to get in. Up to 50min in terrible traffic (rush hour in a snow storm). To take transit, I would have to hop on 3 separate buses, it would take 2hrs on a good day, and cost a hell of a lot more. Now if I worked downtown, it would be 40min in to work versus about 1hr driving during peak rush. But, commuter trains out of my town only run during peak hours. Since I work 3-10pm, I would have to take a bus in, which would take about 1-1.5hrs with all stops. Costing about $16 a day round trip. That's assuming I worked close to the train station and didn't have to take the subway anywhere.
The province's current transit improvement plans are all focusing on building improved service for downtown Toronto. So the growing suburban population has no choice but to drive, and the highways are jammed.
The obvious solution would be to change around the usual 9-5 day. The highways are empty between about 9:30am and 4pm. Though I expect that changing work hours would encounter a lot of resistance. Carpooling only makes sense if you happen to live near co-workers, and that they have the same hours you do. Which is not practical if you're a shift worker.
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