Speaking from experience, the way California and Washington have priced surge pricing fucking sucks. It effectively pushes the indigent out of carpool lanes and provides a marvelous, wide banzai road for motorcyclists. Traffic on the 110 got radically worse with surge pricing and the pricing model executed by Washington State was onerous enough that Republicans sacked the transportation secretary over it.
I actually just mailed with wasoxygen about this today.
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.