> IMO, fees should only be used against congestion ...
... and we're back around to the central thesis of this thread: fees are a lousy way to combat congestion. If congestion is "bad" because of extra pollution, extra stress, lost time, lost GDP, wasted resources ... the best way to combat congestion is a combination of offering alternatives and removing artifical chokepoints in the form of fee-collection devices.
I don't think it's fair that people can just say "congestion pricing works to combat congestion" without having looked at all the evidence to the contrary (even though a lot of it appears in the archives of this list; you don't have to look far!). It simply doesn't work, and it's failed bad policy; this is doubly-so when you try to support the idea with the notion that the money you raise with said pricing will be used to fund the missing transit: first, it will never happen; and second, the transit alternative has to be there BEFORE you charge. Finally, what will happen to transit funding once-and-if you achieve the decrease in Bad Behavior ...?
This is exactly what happened in many states with education funding and the lotteries: once they relegated funding to the lotteries, they can cut funding because the math-challenged didn't buy enough tickets. You have to keep the funding in the General Fund, or you risk giving it back later.
"Congestion pricing" is just a thinly-veiled emotional antagonism against "drivers" without a second thought to why it is people drive or what can be done to mittigate the real problems surrounding transportation policy in the US.
/jordan