When you see an "easy" solution to congestion, there are usually factors that make it not so easy - if cities rely on cars for personal transport and don't provide a transit alternative, then congestion pricing alone isn't going to help other than being a regressive tax on the people that can least afford to pay it. The $200K/year software engineer can avoid the $10 tax by working from home until 10am when the rate drops to $5. The $30K/year service worker doesn't have that option, when his workday starts at 9am, he has no choice.
And you can only stretch out the commute so far with congestion pricing before the morning commute runs into the afternoon commute, already in the bay area (pre-covid), I was seeing stop and go traffic from early afternoon through 8pm or so. COVID has been a nice reprieve from the traffic, but many companies want their employees back in the office, so within a year or so, traffic levels will be back to pre-covid levels, maybe worse because many people moved farther away when they were working from home.
You're missing that there are marginal trips that would be discouraged/eliminated if one had to pay for them.
There can be subsidies for low income individuals if one cares about the regressive aspect (I don't). Low income individuals can use carpooling to escape per-person fees, as well.
If those marginal trips aren't already dissuaded by rush hour traffic, it's going to be hard to dissuade them with congestion pricing. I intentionally avoid rush hour traffic when scheduling doctors appointments, etc, but sometimes it's not always possible. And if there's focus on personal vehicles over transit, then people will have no alternative, they either drive and join the traffic on the road or don't go.
If you take away transit and rely on personal car transport, there's going to be a point where there's no price that will stop the congestion.
Using San Francisco as an example, the Bay Bridge carries around 250,000 cars/day, while BART's transbay tube carries around 300,000 passengers/day.
If you put those BART passengers into cars, even if you build another Bay Bridge, how are all of those cars going to fit onto city streets and where are they going to park? Even if they are magic self-driving cars, that's going to double the amount of traffic on city streets (one trip to drop someone off, one to pick them up).
Assuming that you don't count "not having a functional city" as an acceptable cost, if you don't provide any alternative to cars, I don't think there's any price that you can set that will stop congestion. At higher prices, you may as well just call it "travel rationing" since a price of, say, $500/trip would price commuting out the reach of almost everyone.
You can certainly use congestion pricing to shift some portion of traffic or drive people to other modes of transportation, but if the only choice is driving, then congestion pricing isn't really a solution.
Any basic economics textbook can explain supply and demand and the marginal substitution that occurs as prices change. "...there's no price that will stop the congestion" is simply wrong.
I already provided carpooling as an example of a behavior change that could occur in response to price increases which would reduce cars on the road while keeping the number of trips the same. There are many, many others.
I'm not sure why you think I advocate "taking away transit" - congestion pricing is one way to make transit more attractive, something it badly needs.
I'm not sure why you think I advocate "taking away transit"
Look back to where I joined this thread:
Does America need to have better mass transit? I am not sure... Maybe improve personal vehicle is the way to go?
If you're saying that mass transit coupled with congestion pricing can reduce congestion, I agree. I'm saying that if mass transit is ignored in favor of personal cars as transportation, then you can't use congestion pricing to get out of congestion, because people will have to drive, regardless of price. If you price driving so high that people literally can't afford to drive to meet basic needs, then it's no longer congestion pricing, it's rationing.
I was not part of the discussion in that part of the thread.
I agree with the statement that "mass transit coupled with congestion pricing can reduce congestion".
I disagree with the statement that "if mass transit is ignored in favor of personal cars as transportation, then you can't use congestion pricing to get out of congestion", for the reasons I've already stated.
Saying that "people will have to drive, regardless of price" is indicative of being unfamiliar with the economic way of thinking about tradeoffs.
I don't want to discourage marginal trips. I want them to happen because that marginal value is worth it. Sure you can discourage them for congestion reasons, but that means something useful can't happen.
That is true, but if the price of the road-space resource is zero, it will be overconsumed and lead to even greater value loss due to time wasted in traffic.
