My response to that would be in a lot of ways car ownership is already cost-prohibitive after insurance, gas, maintenance and parking to a not-insignificant par

My response to that would be in a lot of ways car ownership is already cost-prohibitive after insurance, gas, maintenance and parking to a not-insignificant part of the population, and indeed these people do already primarily use public transit — not so much out of convenience but necessity. Should our regulations accept this as a necessary evil that those who today can’t already afford a car must rely on subpar second-class transit? If the vast majority of people used public transit as their primarily form of transit, and we dedicated as much resources to it as we do to our roads, it would only get better for everyone. If we could entice people to get out of their cars and politicians to drastically increase public investment in transit, then yes, congestion pricing wouldn’t be necessary at all — but in general that hasn’t been the case, and nothing in recent history points to this paradigm shift happening on its own. I believe this issue is in many ways one of prioritization and balance, and right now the status quo is already cutting off some of the most vulnerable demographics from this “shared public resource.”