Congestion pricing: right solution for the wrong problem?

Interesting discussion about congestion pricing aka ERP, over at bikeforums.net. In particular, comments by JusticeZero, a transportation planner from Melbourne, Australia:

I'm a transportation planner by trade; i've spent several years studying these sort of things.
Congestion pricing is the right solution for the wrong problem. They use it in Singapore, a *tiny* nation, accompanied by stupidly high registration fees. The end result? Roads run smoothly 24/7, and the average car racks up as many miles per year as a commuter in the Los Angeles area does with their legendary long commutes... further than any other U.S. city.

London uses a cordon charge. They didn't do it in order to reduce traffic; most people rode the bus to London. No, it was used as a way to improve funding for and speeds of buses in the city core. The ring road outside the cordon suffers massive gridlock.

The better solution is parking control, ala Donald Shoup - regulate and limit all the parking in the city and manage it so that there is NO free parking, and adjust prices so that one out of seven parking spaces is vacant during the rush. It has had much better results than congestion charges.

In another post on the same thread, JusticeZero writes:

One, congestion pricing is far more expensive to administer than parking controls, which are just as effective and moreso in center cities, as studies have shown that between 50-80% of traffic in gridlock would disappear instantly if parking spaces magically became available. Parking pricing also has the advantage of not raising any privacy concerns, as parking meters are blind to the identity of vehicles. Furthermore, it encourages higher densities, which means lower travel times - much of the land in a city ends up used for parking.

For details on that, look at Shoup, Donald (2005) "The High Cost of Free Parking" American Planners Association.It's turned a LOT of planning thought around on this issue and is really the state of the art in congestion control.

Secondly, Melbourne's public transit system is junk. They have an AMAZING train network and a WONDERFUL tram network and a lot of buses. Try getting anywhere where you have to take more than one of them though, and you're in for a steaming pile of fail. They actively avoid making connections in a way that you can make your transfers. They don't have bike racks on any of their transit, either. And then you have all the Connex fiascoes.