I actually just mailed with wasoxygen about this today.

"[Induced demand is] the great intellectual black hole in city planning, the one professional certainty that everyone thoughtful seems to acknowledge, yet almost no one is willing to act upon."

Congestion charging - the traffic planner's term for it - actually works like a charm. It's probably the only reason London isn't gridlocked all day every day. It depends on the implementation, and in US cases, it's usually toll roads and not congestion zones. Charging on roads has been shown to be effective for that road, but not for the surroundings as traffic diverts more than it reduces.

That said, I do think that AVs can alleviate traffic if they will end up being shared taxi-like vehicles. Those can be regulated and congestion-charged to hell and back. Here's the thing about traffic jams that people often forget: the distribution of vehicles over time is just as important as the amount of vehicles. Highways are built for peak demand, but never have those traffic intensities outside of the short morning and afternoon peak. (Unless you're in LA, but that's a different story.) Spreading that peak out could prevent jams could be enough to seriously reduce jams. And who knows, maybe society can finally get rid of the artificial 9 to 5 window where all business must occur.