Raising the cost to drive isn't going to make people stop driving unless they have good alternatives, you're just making their life more expensive. Most of the cars on the road are people going somewhere they need to go. Transit in the SF bay is pretty expensive and also not super viable for getting around, at least currently.
It's a short walk to a local Caltrain station for me and I can take it almost directly to my official desk in San Francisco, but doing so takes ~2hrs and costs me ~$10 one-way. Barely competitive (cost-wise) with driving a car and considerably slower than driving. Time is money, so the idea of throwing away 2 hrs/day of my life and not saving money vs driving is not especially compelling and I can't blame people w/2-3 jobs for hopping in their car if it's the best choice. (I work from home instead, but most people don't have that option)
I think the (one-off) example from the article is interesting because it shows that if you lower transit costs, usage does go up and traffic improves. Improved traffic means that the people who do drive will be spending less time on the road, which means burning less gas - less money spent on gas and less climate impact.
Incidentally we do have some toll roads in the area, which I guess does have your intended effect because nobody wants to use them? They just use other roads instead.
We can certainly reshape cities, but "quickly" in that context would be decades, and in that time period people will be miserable and will end up homeless or worse.
It's a short walk to a local Caltrain station for me and I can take it almost directly to my official desk in San Francisco, but doing so takes ~2hrs and costs me ~$10 one-way. Barely competitive (cost-wise) with driving a car and considerably slower than driving. Time is money, so the idea of throwing away 2 hrs/day of my life and not saving money vs driving is not especially compelling and I can't blame people w/2-3 jobs for hopping in their car if it's the best choice. (I work from home instead, but most people don't have that option)
I think the (one-off) example from the article is interesting because it shows that if you lower transit costs, usage does go up and traffic improves. Improved traffic means that the people who do drive will be spending less time on the road, which means burning less gas - less money spent on gas and less climate impact.
Incidentally we do have some toll roads in the area, which I guess does have your intended effect because nobody wants to use them? They just use other roads instead.
We can certainly reshape cities, but "quickly" in that context would be decades, and in that time period people will be miserable and will end up homeless or worse.