People should pay for what they use. And the price for what they use should go up when demand for it is high.
After all, the most expensive construction is done to satisfy demand when demand is high.
And paying for what you use will spur people to use less of that valuable road space. Alternatives will increase as more people seek to avoid paying the actual costs for they had been using.
Yes, we do pay gas taxes. But that effectively translates into a subsidy for traveling when demand is high. It's not a reality-based price.
Imagine if government provided all the hotel rooms and you always paid the same price. Peak demand would be much higher than it is now. And there would be political pressure to build many more hotel rooms. And this construction would require higher taxes because the additional rooms would be the most expensive to build while also only being used when demand is higher.
Of course, we don't usually think of road space as space we are occupying, just like we occupy a hotel room. But it is.
How would we implement this? Regular commuters could have a fixed price they pay in advance. But they could get paid to delay their trip when traffic is particular bad. And those not planning ahead would pay a spot price, which would go up enough to deter non-planners from traveling and/or convince commuters to delay.
And if there is an uproar about making people pay to get to jobs when they cannot control when they start work, make the employer pay for these workers. If it costs workers more to do a job, the employer will have to pay them more to do it anyway, so why not get the support of those workers who don't understand this reality?