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What you do is charge a higher price to ride the trains or drive on the roads, so that supply equals demand. You might also want to build more roads or trains if it was profitable from a private or social standpoint. That is the idea behind induced demand, driving on a road is free, so during peak times it will always fill up, because the queueing time is the only cost. It’s like bread lines in the Soviet Union’s.
Arguable, if politically infeasible (but most things discussed here are). But 'build more lanes' is still worth doing under the current system, because they'll let more peop®le get to their destinations at the current (serviceable) congestion level, presumably?
Also, is a price that eliminates congestion necessarily the optimal price, either privately or socially? Plausibly having some fast, high-cost lanes and a bunch of cheap, low-cost lanes would maximize profit.
I agree with all your points and they already have fast high-cost lanes and cheap low-cost lanes in some especially congested parts of the Bay Area. Not to mention, the more ubiquitous carpool lanes elsewhere. Expanding such systems is difficult technologically and politically, however. Increasing the amount of lanes is also difficult due to land clearance issues. Freeways tend to have lots of businesses, farms and houses built up against them and removing those can prove intractable.
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