Same reason congestion pricing is hated everywhere until it's implemented and people start seeing the benefits, people are cheap. Coincidentally also the reason congestion pricing works so well at regulating demand for a road and improving conditions.
The stupidest part to me is that toll roads work this way and are wildly popular with conservatives. They're just angry it's a public thing and that it's for public transportation support and not to make some private company money.
Thing is…this is just another toll. It bills you the same as all the other tolls in the city. They just gave it a different name. That’s it. In the first days, people were bitching because they took the trains and the busses, but everyone who isn’t an asshole (those of us who don’t drive) didn’t even realize it took effect and everyone was like “woah, what’s going on? Is it a holiday? It was so quiet on my way to work. It was awesome.”
Cars checks all the boxes to them - helps with segregation, creates demand for oil, multiple vectors for environmental destruction, weird nostalgia and culture war fodder, another subsidy for rural/suburban voters, and it's the embodiment of not giving a shit about anyone else's and being a big boy. But yeah each of the individual factors boils down to spite.