A good analogy is a queue. Imagine a society of mostly-identical people. You set up a stand that offers free sandwiches, but you can only give the sandwich to one person a minute. What will happen? A line will form outside your stand, growing longer until the length of the line is such that the discomfort of waiting in line is equal to the pleasure of eating the sandwich. So even though your sandwiches are supposedly free, a cost is still imposed on everyone who wants one, because they have to waste time standing in line.

You're right that people who can defer traveling to avoid traffic jams and congestion already tend to do so. But there are still people at the margin. People who don't value their time or don't mind sitting in traffic listening to the radio or dislike taking the bus. These people are creating congestion, imposting a cost on everyone else, and paying nothing for it. They would do it less if they had to pay. (It's okay for people to drive and sit in traffic, there's just no reason it should be free!) So it would really be more like "Good news! Surge pricing is in effect, and today your commute will cost you twice the usual price but take half as long!"

I’ve never been on a public bus and thought, “this is great!”. Crowded, dirty, and almost always there is someone on drugs or experiencing psychosis. I’ll stick to my car.

So let them? I fail to see the problem here.

why wouldn't it decrease volume? presumably if it starts costing 100 bucks a day people would stop driving and take these hypothetical buses, no? of course as I mentioned I know this would never actually work for political reasons.

> People already driving generally aren't likely to change their destination

They are if you price it properly. If it costs $1000 to get on that road, a lot of people are going to find alternative means of transport, carpool, or forgo the trip entirely.

It's more elastic than you might assume. There's a phenomenon called traffic evaporation, when a major roadway is closed or diminished (even unexpectedly), people adjust their travel behavior such that travel times stay relatively constant.

Los Angeles has many such examples, one recent and well studied one was the closure of the 10 freeway after a fire.

It totally is. Demand can be induced. You can build more highways/roads, you can build more transit options, you can decide how to design roads and handle zoning, affecting how far people go (where are their jobs and stores?), you can decide to build protected bike lanes or build prioritized bus lanes, etc.

All of these factors and more affect demand for transportation.

it’s actually been shocking to me how elastic it is. it frankly pisses me off how much time i spend in traffic behind people who are apparently fully deterred by a mere $1-2 fee. we should absolutely have faster lanes for people who are driving for higher value reasons.