Having sat in Southern California traffic, traffic flow often at a crawl, I've taken a mild interest in the subject as well. I think the problem here no longer has to do with traffic regulations, the design of the roads, or the behavior of drivers, but has to do with capacity. Some form of mass transit would be far superior than an 8-lane (in one direction) highway with so many people in cars trying to use it at the same time, that literally, nobody can move faster than a walking pace. I think self-driving cars or very skilled driving habits from people could alleviate some of the problem, but unless the number of cars is reduced in some way, traffic will still become congested in this part of the country on a daily basis. Only so many cars can fit through this bottleneck at one time.