> The benefit comes when prices reach the level where traffic flows at full speed.
How then does your gardener get his truck to your house? Your DoorDash driver? The elderly woman on a fixed income who needs to get to her doctors appointment?
Roads cannot be the domain of the rich. (Also please don't pretend that public transport is even remotely viable in the US)
> How then does your gardener get his truck to your house? Your DoorDash driver? The elderly woman on a fixed income who needs to get to her doctors appointment?
The whole idea is to reduce peak demand. Your gardener doesn’t need to go downtown at the same time as office workers, so they are unlikely to be affected since they’re going to your house rather than your office and they can show up at 10am. Similarly, getting breakfast from DoorDash across town is not a human right - you can order closer to home or pay market rate for use of a couple hundred feet of public space to haul your burrito.
> I'll note that all your "poor" examples own a car.
This is actually a key point many city dwelling anti-car advocates completely miss. The poor do depend heavily on cars because they are pushed to the outskirts where they can afford housing but still have to commute to the cities where the jobs are. When I lived outside the Bay Area my car cost me less than what some people here spend on their bikes.
This increases the traffic throughput by maybe 5x, which makes the road much more useful.