Was adding the lanes a win for the city? The commuters? The environment?
It is counter intuitive, but if you think about it. Everyone has a commuting pain threshold that will cause a change in behavior. If a stretch of highway takes 10 minutes less because of additional lanes, then people will start commuting from 10 minutes further away.
Fortunately it's really easy to exactly quantify trip times, cars per lane, and similar. Quite a few studies have shown short term benefit, but within a year the traffic is within 0.1% of what it started with before adding the lanes.
It was a win for the local economy.
By allowing more people to drive to and from locations they please, you are allowing more people to work jobs they otherwise wouldn't be able to, and purchase goods and services they wouldn't otherwise.
I'm rarely a fan of government spending; but, roads, police, and firefighting are probably some of the least evil.
A street is made for transporting humans first and foremost. It has sidewalks, driveways to houses are accessed directly from the street, and pedestrians can cross with relative ease, to the point that crosswalks are basically unnecessary.
A road is made for transporting cars first and foremost. There shouldn't be many residential driveways directly leading into a road, there may be sidewalks but they're not going to get used often, and you should rarely see pedestrians trying to cross. Crosswalks are very necessary on roads.
There's no getting around the fact that we need roads. Cars and trucks need ways to move long distanced quickly. The problem becomes when city designers try to mix streets and roads (to make a stroad), leading to massive arteries running through the heart of a residential neighborhood. Proper city design puts roads outside of pedestrian-heavy neighborhoods and fills them with easily and safely walkable streets instead.
There's nothing wrong with an 8 lane road, as long as that road isn't supposed to be used as a street as well.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/3/1/whats-a-stroad-...
Interestingly autism rates appear to be higher near freeways (like the ones we put in the middle of cities), yet the anti-freeways-in-urban-cores crowd somehow lacks mindshare compared to antivaxxers.
They've got tons of articles that are right up your alley on the dangers of just putting a 25mph speed limit on a road and calling it a "street".
This one is my favorite: Just Another Pedestrian Killed https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/12/3/just-another-p...
1. https://www.kgw.com/article/news/crime/trimet-barber-gets-2-...
2. https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2017/05/police...
3. http://www.wweek.com/news/2017/06/02/man-pummels-max-train-o...
4. https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2018/05/crime_...
Move to smaller over-the-road mass transit for off-hours or have fewer busses. You don't need to have full-size busses at 2am when you can use the smaller busses that schools use at times, for example, or simply have a bus that runs once an hour. You can make sure that major employers are serviced by busses either regularly or at times when their shifts start and stop (factories, for example). You can use van-sized taxis for smaller areas and adjust the routes to meet needs in smaller areas or have electric, automatic trams that run at specific times through the day and less so at night. Intercity travel can be more restricted if the demand isn't there.
Amsterdam has folks scan their ticket for the trams on their way out ... so they can see where folks are going to and from, in general, to better meet demand. Something like this can surely be done in different ways.
Even more, you can create safe walking and cycling paths so folks are more likely to be able safely get to public transport. Have bus shelters many places. Perhaps don't expect it to make a profit. Perhaps tax vehicles to help pay for them when they are available to the user - after all, if you own a car when public transport will adequately fit your needs, the car is a luxury. Perhaps utilize more tolls to help pay for them.
I've never had someone harass me on a bus where I am at now. In fact, I didn't have this issue in the states either when I was lucky enough to live in a place with busses. It would seem the solution would be to actually take care of folks that are homeless and mentally ill. It would make sense to call the police if someone is causing an actual disturbance to others. These aren't problems with public transportation, these are problems with society.
Note, they are only a challenge if bureaucrats and big business continue to pour money into centralizing resources in giant cities. In a modern Internet connected economy, there is very little reason to colocate so many government services and large corporations.