Alex Cohen talks to Alex Bayen, Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at University of California, Berkeley, about why we have so much trouble navigating through traffic in Los Angeles and surrounding areas.

We can’t build more highways, but even if we could, Bayen says it’s not the right approach to solve the problems.

So, what can be done? Bayen says we should capitalize on high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes.

“If you increase the number of lanes from which you require higher occupancy vehicles, so three per car, even four per car, there already you would guarantee some shift in demand that would not only ensure that there is, in a sense, more throughput on HOV or HOT lanes, but also would help with the fact that then you would need less cars on the road,” he said.