I'm not arguing it wouldn't/couldn't lead to discrimination. I just don't see how it's inherently classist.

The argument seemed to imply something like "charging people money for different qualities of service is classist, because poor people have less money".

This is exactly how toll roads work. You get on, and then pay when you get off based on how many miles travelled.

So, if you were starting in New York City, it would cost a lot more to travel to Buffalo than it would to White Plains.

Except none of the provisions for paid-prioritization mentions, let alone mandates, new roads. If this were about new toll roads, these already exist and are paid-peering arrangements, CDNs, etc. [1]

These new rules are explicitly about 'traffic shaping', by price, by destination, existing traffic along existing routes.

So this is less like using toll roads to cross New York State and more like selectively saying "everyone in New York State that's driving to a Starbucks needs to travel 10/mph slower -- however they're getting there -- or kick in $2/mo to drive the old speed limit."

[1] Microsoft pays Comcast gobs of money to ensure a performant network connection for XBox Live. This is quite different from Comcast being able to say "Sony isn't also paying us money for better service. Let's slow them down -- to protect the network -- until they pay up."

Let's say that roads out of residential areas are owned by some company named R, and the residents pay R a fee to get access to the main arteries.

Some roads are used more by people of some cultures than others, sometimes roads get congested when lots of people in one neighborhood are all trying to get to the same place at the same time.

Would it be discriminatory for R to spend more on upgrades to the roads to some locations than at other locations? What if all the roads that were best to get to Chinatown were completely neglected?