I am aware of this - I did switched from 17-40 to the 16mm. Yes the 16 is lot better. But there are 20 Years of R&D in-between.The RF16 f/2.8 STM is much, much sharper in the corner than the 17-40L, even after distortion correction. It's also much sharper in the center at f/2.8 than the 17-40L is stopped down to f/5.6. And it may very well be that cropping the RF16 to 40mm field-of-view might give similar image quality to the 17-40L at 40mm.
The RF15-30 STM is also much sharper everywhere, but isn't f/4.
The 17-40L also need a filter to be weather sealed, so all in all, it's not what you'd expect from an L lens. But it's black with a red ring, so it looks great on a camera
What u or some "expect" from a L Lense seams to be based an modern EF and RF Ls. In the past there where a lot of pretty bad Ls around, even worse than the 17-40. The 17-40 just got a bit famous for that, since it still keeps being in production for decades now.
And it is also not the only lens I mentioned. Its was just about the point, that there are in fact a decent amount of L Lenses in a Mid Price Range. Of course some are not as good as others. but the 100L Macro and the 24-70 f/4 L are definitely not bad at all while still pretty cheap (EF Versions).
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