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The difference between a wider highway and a better public transit is that widening a highway doesn't benefit existing drivers. If your commute took 30 minutes on a four-lane highway and they added four more lanes and now twice as many people use it, your commute is still 30 minutes.
Whereas if you had to stand on a bus that came every 30 minutes, and they added more buses and now they come every 15 minutes, but twice as many people use it and you still have to stand, your waiting time has improved. If they replace the bus route with a light rail that comes every five minutes and is twice as fast and even more people use it and you still have to stand, you still get the benefit of nonexistent waiting times and a much faster commute.
Is building denser housing more like building more lanes or like building public transit? I honestly think we still do not know. At first glance, it feels more like adding more lanes, but if you decuple the density of housing, you also decuple the density of amenities within reach and can even support less universally appealing amenities that require a certain number of visitors to survive.
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