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Notes -
Yeah. If the only cost one pays to drive is in travel time, and more people want to use the road at 0 congestion than can, congestion will be the 'price' that rises until the market clears. And if the supply curve is X people can use the road at 0 congestion, but X * 1.05 people can use the road at high congestion ... if the demand curve is in the wrong place, everyone can end up with high congestion. But this isn't a "distributive effect" as it'd be if it was a toll price extracting surplus value, because nobody's "getting" the lost time to congestion, it's just burned.
I'm not entirely sure what a 'full capacity but not max throughput' road looks like? (genuine question as opposed to rhetorical)
I wouldn't be surprised if past a certain point congestion decreased capacity.
A traffic jam.
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