There is actually such a thing as city planning and many streets could, in fact, not be operated by the government for broad public benefit but for the benefit of the people living nearby. E.g. in a residential zone in a suburb the streets may actually be intended to connect the homes not for through traffic.
Streets are kind of built for an expected load too right? I live on a dead end and have to assume my street would wear out faster than the neighborhood thoroughfare if it had an equal level of traffic.
Wear and tear to pavement is roughly proportional to vehicle weight to the fourth power; thus cars and SUVs are almost negligible compared to the damage caused by commercial trucks and weather. If a residential street is already marked as "no trucks", then that's all the damage prevention that is worthwhile.
That is a common suburb design: it tends to fail on the generational level. New Urbanism has a long list of evidence about the problems with suburban design.
