If you take away transit and rely on personal car transport, there's going to be a point where there's no price that will stop the congestion.
Using San Francisco as an example, the Bay Bridge carries around 250,000 cars/day, while BART's transbay tube carries around 300,000 passengers/day.
If you put those BART passengers into cars, even if you build another Bay Bridge, how are all of those cars going to fit onto city streets and where are they going to park? Even if they are magic self-driving cars, that's going to double the amount of traffic on city streets (one trip to drop someone off, one to pick them up).
Assuming that you don't count "not having a functional city" as an acceptable cost, if you don't provide any alternative to cars, I don't think there's any price that you can set that will stop congestion. At higher prices, you may as well just call it "travel rationing" since a price of, say, $500/trip would price commuting out the reach of almost everyone.
You can certainly use congestion pricing to shift some portion of traffic or drive people to other modes of transportation, but if the only choice is driving, then congestion pricing isn't really a solution.
I already provided carpooling as an example of a behavior change that could occur in response to price increases which would reduce cars on the road while keeping the number of trips the same. There are many, many others.
I'm not sure why you think I advocate "taking away transit" - congestion pricing is one way to make transit more attractive, something it badly needs.
Look back to where I joined this thread:
Does America need to have better mass transit? I am not sure... Maybe improve personal vehicle is the way to go?
If you're saying that mass transit coupled with congestion pricing can reduce congestion, I agree. I'm saying that if mass transit is ignored in favor of personal cars as transportation, then you can't use congestion pricing to get out of congestion, because people will have to drive, regardless of price. If you price driving so high that people literally can't afford to drive to meet basic needs, then it's no longer congestion pricing, it's rationing.
