[mlyle]

Non-toll roadways are a common-pool resource with significant externalities. They invite overuse and push most of the harms of overuse on others (locals, pedestrians, etc).

Congestion charges or tolls are a good way to put a price on the resource and make market mechanisms work.

Then the resources can be used for whatever produces the greatest benefit (and thus is willing to pay the most for use of the resource), and the tolls obtained can pay to address the externalities.

[seoulmetro]

Tolls are there to pay for the new roadwork(s) (and in some cases, line private company profits). Nothing more. Anything else is not effective, it's just prohibitive.

[mlyle]

It's good to have any scarce common resource be bid for, rather than giving it to whomever shows up first, is willing to wait longest, etc.

If 150k people want to go, it's usually better that the 100k people who value the road the most get through quickly, instead of having a random 110k get through after a large traffic jam.

[seoulmetro]

150k people wanting to go and being able to go is better than a quarter being forced to stay home, a quarter being forced to not go and another half being allowed to go.

You seem to misunderstand the problem.

[mlyle]

I understand basic economics just fine; but what you say seems to be orthogonal/not understanding what the common pool problem is.

Market mechanisms allocate resources better than "whomever is willing to endure the worst conditions" does.

[seoulmetro]

This has nothing to do with market mechanisms. You can't look at and negotiate with the market to get to work cheaper.

[mlyle]

In many places, congestion pricing is dynamic and tries to keep roads at the highest throughput capacity.

Here, it's a pseudo-static value chosen to try and push the roads to the highest throughput capacity. (There is some variation by time of day, but not by actual demand).

It has a lot to do with market mechanisms. This is stuff that's within the capability of a high school student to perform a reasonable analysis about after a semester-long class.