Option 4: Build excellent public transport so that cars are not the best choice.
Option 4 is also very difficult to achieve. Even Tokyo, with its legendary transit coverage, also has a ton of car traffic. What is much easier is to recognize that if everyone plows into their car for every trip we’ll all be stuck in gridlock, then put congestion charges in place so that everyone who can feasibly get their trip accomplished without driving is incentivized to do so, and the trips that really require a car are able to pay the fee and then have a nice trip quality.
I lived a few months in Tokyo, without a car of course, and got by very well with a shitty mamachari and the subway. I wonder what the modal split in Tokyo is like, compared to other cities. I bet most person kilometers are met by trains and subways.
That's less about removing congestion and more about clearing the roads of poor people to make room for everyone else unless you pay road toll as a % of income and assets.
It becomes more important to reserve "transfer nodes" (especially at the edges) where drivers can drop their car and hop on other transport modes though. That is something which is often lacking.
So you wait a little bit at the meter but your (and everyone else's) overall travel time is actually faster. I recommend this YouTube video (and the whole channel) for great explanations of the traffic dynamics.
When the line from the meters spills onto the adjancement roadway, some people will take alternate routes, but mostly people want to get onto the freeway because it's the best route, even if it's congested.
1. You can demolish large chunks of the city so that fewer people have a reason to visit, and spread development paper-thin over a wide area so that it stays beneath the incredibly low density threshold that causes car congestion. This is the approach taken by most US cities after WW2, however it has only worked in cities that have gone into economic decline because the places with meaningful growth consistently fill in more densely than cars can accommodate even with half the old downtown reduced to parking lots and strict zoning laws etc.
2. You can charge for the roads. Congestion pricing deters people who don’t really need to drive at a particular place and time from doing so, and thus allows the roads to flow freely even in urban centers. Surprisingly, it doesn’t take a huge toll to eliminate rush hour, as (1) the tipping point for traffic congestion is roughly the last 10% of cars that can fit on the road, and (2) it turns out that there’s a lot of low-value driving on the margin which simply stops when there’s a price attached to it.
The smart option is #2.