Do you know what it means to be rich? Serious question.
It's not "having a lot of money". It's actually "having a lot of options".
By definition, rich people will have more ways to get around than poor people. The rich can hire a limo, hop in a helicopter, and even take a trip to space.
Is it a social injustice that not everyone can afford a limo, helicopter, or spaceship?
I do not think it's bad to take steps to make driving an activity for richer people, to make it a luxury that it initially was when cars were invented.
On the flip side of things, look at what the dream of mass-market affordable cars, free highways, and free parking have done to society: Swathes of land wasted for parking, low density cities that kill walking/cycling/transit, millions of people dying in car crashes, endless congestion and lane-widening.
> Do you know what it means to be rich? Serious question.
A serious question that you immediately proceed to answer, with rhetoric that it's preferable for there to be only the relative few rich elite, who implicitly should enjoy all the luxuries possible in the world, but there should not be these luxuries for the lesser people, since our experiments in permitting the peasants to enjoy small amounts of society's wealth has been a disaster, encroaching upon the enjoyment of the rich, and making the poors uppity?
That might be the case in other cities, but in NYC the socioeconomic dynamics are less clear. It’s mostly affluent-to-rich suburbanites that drive to work from outside the city, with rich and poor city residents primarily taking public transit (and to a lesser extent using taxis and car services). Almost no city residents - rich, poor or in between - drive to and from a 9-5 job in Manhattan.
An alternative take is that people who can only afford mass transit options (without even adding congestion pricing) are now on a level playing field with most commuters, and should experience a better commute less affected by traffic.
(This assumes that the mass transit options are invested in, rather than overrun by people switching.)
Isn't this a step backwards for social justice?