They kinda tried that in London with congestion charging - i.e. you have to pay £11.50 or £21.50 (depending on vehicle) a day to drive into central London. Lat

They kinda tried that in London with congestion charging - i.e. you have to pay £11.50 or £21.50 (depending on vehicle) a day to drive into central London. Latest data I could easily find (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge) was that after 10 years of operation it reduced traffic by 10% (ten). A report from 2014 said that traffic levels are now close to pre-congestion-charge levels (https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/roads/cc-changes-march-2014/user_uploads/cc-impact-assessment.pdf https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/roads/cc-changes-march-2014...). The public buses and privately-run taxis are everywhere and are significant causes of traffic in my anecdotal experience (e.g. bus blocking the road waiting for someone to finish talking to the driver, bus blocking junction, buses blocking road waiting to get into bus stop where 5 other buses already are waiting to pick-up or put-down, taxi-drivers stopping in illegal places to drop people off or doing illegal u-turns etc etc. Whats worse is the buses are diesel and pump out loads of fumes from their heavy diesel engines. Bus ridership is falling (http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/londons-bus-ridership-is-falling-three-times-faster-than-the-rest-of-englands/ http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/londons-bus-ridership-is-falling...) yet we still have to put up with them and their diesel. tl;dr - charging doesn't work at the £10-20/day prices (equivalent to 3.6 to 6.7 Big Macs on the BigMacIndex a day to drive into london) I guess it might work if the fees go up an order of magnitude.