But it makes it free to use public transport on top of that: it encourages people to use it for more than commutes (improving traffic in turn), which makes sense because commutes are peak utilisation time, the rolling stock is under utilized at every other time.
Have you tried using the subway during rush hour to get home in NYC? If you’re going in the same general direction as everyone else, it was already packed long before congestion pricing. The MTA is 50 billion+ in debt, and it will cost billions more to add capacity over decades.
That seems doubtful but possible since fares of public transit tend to run at a loss. Most public transit just offloaded the cost on poor who must drive to less accessible and less wealthy unserviced areas as collected tax expenditures from their checks.
Your mind is going to be blown when you find out how much it costs to own and operate a car, not to mention how much it costs in terms of time to commute back and forth.
Sure, you have to pay for public road parasitism by pedestrian, public transit on roads funded partially by fuel taxes, and heavy road destroying vehicles. Not that I blame them, they're taking advantage of incentives offered. Who wouldn't want to bike on a road funded by car owners and then buy goods transported by 18 wheelers that end up destroying the road disproportionately to the point it is small passenger cars that get the biggest squeeze.
It's not dumb to not want to be the sucker, the urban yuppies on transit routes are great at squeezing the working class that way.
I do take multiple other rides a day and in the weekend though, so I hit 12 rides pretty quickly, probably in around 4 days.