Reason Foundation (obviously coming from a market/privatization point of view) did a series of videos about these types of problems.
TL;DR:
Tolls make sense in the situation of "only highways" regardless. You can make high-speed toll lanes/highways on/along side the existing highways (and put buses there too).
Those who can afford the tolls pay for the speed feeding more money into the system. Those who cannot pay more than they already do through gas tax and such, deal slower traffic, but that traffic should be lessened due to people paying for higher speed and hopefully on more buses. There's additionally higher funding available to spend on increasingly
Current highways are effectively the tragedy of the commons, which is where semi-private/public-private partnership toll roads could alleviate the problem. Certain transit systems have pros and cons depending on area, and for places like LA it is likely that at least for now highways should be the focus of additional spending.
I'll leave the arguments to the videos, some are quite long (45+ min talks by policy experts). Mostly passing along in case others are interested, particularly those who might have strong opinions to the contrary (e.g.: the 'rail or bust' folks) I've enjoyed the rail system in Europe, but the conditions here are very different so its important to not let one's perfect ideal be the enemy of making something failing significantly better in a bang/buck sense.
TL;DR:
Tolls make sense in the situation of "only highways" regardless. You can make high-speed toll lanes/highways on/along side the existing highways (and put buses there too).
Those who can afford the tolls pay for the speed feeding more money into the system. Those who cannot pay more than they already do through gas tax and such, deal slower traffic, but that traffic should be lessened due to people paying for higher speed and hopefully on more buses. There's additionally higher funding available to spend on increasingly
Current highways are effectively the tragedy of the commons, which is where semi-private/public-private partnership toll roads could alleviate the problem. Certain transit systems have pros and cons depending on area, and for places like LA it is likely that at least for now highways should be the focus of additional spending.
I'll leave the arguments to the videos, some are quite long (45+ min talks by policy experts). Mostly passing along in case others are interested, particularly those who might have strong opinions to the contrary (e.g.: the 'rail or bust' folks) I've enjoyed the rail system in Europe, but the conditions here are very different so its important to not let one's perfect ideal be the enemy of making something failing significantly better in a bang/buck sense.
Highways vs. Rail (2011): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIG0M4WT0s0
Toll vs. Gas (2011): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrh8W2IFQ04
Funding/allocation problems (2012): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUULDlMPFYU
Market success in China (2012): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUPRlrVTd2g
LA specifically w/ tunnels, over/under pass, and that LA has been building "rail" for 25 years so far (2015): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry852YXH53U