Every time I've thought about that, my first internal response has been "there's already congestion pricing!" That is, there's already a very visceral cost imposed in terms of time and aggravation, along with increased fuel consumption and marginal automotive wear. The fact that people do it anyway indicates that the incentive structure pushing the congested commute is bigger.
Whether additional congestion fees could help really depends on how much bigger that structure is. My own guess is that it's quite a bit bigger, to the point where the pain involved (not to mention rents sought) before you find the point where congestion fees actually flip behavior is too large to yield a stable or reasonable outcome.
Yes, there is a cost of time and aggravation without congestion pricing. That's the point! When you decide whether to make a particular trip, you're deciding whether to impose the time/aggravation cost on everyone else using the road (because an additional car slows every car down some), but you don't pay that cost; they do. (As you pay the cost of their decisions.) It's a kind of tragedy of the commons, like the exhaust going out the tailpipes.
Pricing at the marginal cost aligns the incentive structure. What you said was like saying "There's already a carbon tax! That is, there's already a very visceral cost imposed in terms of the climate change we're already seeing." Hot weather doesn't get people to stop spewing CO2 out their tailpipes; expensive gas does, which is what a carbon tax is supposed to be about.
> What you said was like saying "There's already a carbon tax! That is, there's already a very visceral cost imposed in terms of the climate change we're already seeing."
If engaging in greenhouse-magnifying activities resulted in the same immediacy of frustration and discomfort that getting on a crowded freeway does, then sure, I'd not only contend that a carbon tax would be unnecessary, I'd go so far as to say as global warming wouldn't be a policy conversation at all until roughly the time the total waste heat output of human activity started raising the average temps.
Instead when I turn on a light or fill up a gas tank or type an argument on a computer, all I get is useful activity. There's no inherent negative feedback. Additional cost is one of the few signals that could be added.
When you get on the freeway, even in the absence of a fee or tax for your marginal contribution to everyone else's more arduous travel, you are immediately experiencing the aggregated marginal costs contributed by everyone else, in a way that you don't even have to calculate (though you could), you can feel.
And yet people do it anyway. Why? Certainly not because there aren't immediately apparent costs.
A solution that's incurious about why people are willing to bear existing costs isn't likely to be particularly effective at changing behavior. Or at predicting second-order effects even if it does find a price point at which it does.
Have you ever known someone to decide "Let's not take the car this time, it'd create too much congestion for other people"? Because that's a different cost, in amount and not just in who pays, from "With the traffic it'll take us 5 minutes longer than usual". You're not getting the negative feedback of your own decision here either; it's an increment like how when the CO2 goes out the tailpipe, the air right around you the driver is for you personally a little worse.
Of course reality is more complex than a toy model. I brought up the simplest model because your objection seems to me even cruder. People are not generally Hofstadter's superrational agents directly overcoming game-theoretical equilibria in prisoner's dilemmas with a million strangers.
Whether additional congestion fees could help really depends on how much bigger that structure is. My own guess is that it's quite a bit bigger, to the point where the pain involved (not to mention rents sought) before you find the point where congestion fees actually flip behavior is too large to yield a stable or reasonable outcome.