We've long been for congestion pricing, if skeptical of the motives and the horse-sense of many of its proponents. Mayor Bloomberg's Earth Day proposal to, among other things, charge drivers $8 to enter Manhattan lines up with our sense that both environmental and fiscal concerns compel us to begin charging rationally for road usage.

While the plan fits neatly into the mayor's pattern of targeting behaviors with hidden social costs, as with his cigarette tax hike and partially hydrogenated oil ban, it seems odd to introduce a big idea that the state must approve—and will do so, if at all, only after much kicking and screaming—just a year and a half before leaving office, especially as it pushes mayoral candidates of good will to stake out contrary positions in the quest for outer borough votes. Then again, the timing makes a lot more sense if considered in terms of Bloomberg's still not ruled-out run for the presidency.

Meanwhile, the plan so far as we've seen it seems to be largely modeled on London's, and to be over-broad in its present shape. That the price would be the same throughout the day, instead of shifting with demand, seems needlessly inelegant. And by discounting tolls entirely from the $8 fee, he eliminates the incentive not to use these roads, which until now have represented an important resources to outer borough people willing to pay a price to enter the city quickly, or at least less slowly. Even as he's trying to rationalize pricing within Manhattan, that is, he's making pricing entering Manhattan less sensible.

We also hoped that a congestion pricing scheme might particularly go after the cabs and trucks that generate a great deal of the island's traffic, chaos, din, smog and snarl. For instance, charging trucks a high fee for entering the city during certain hours, or reducing the number of cabs on the street by reforming the corrupt medallion system would both have as great an impact on traffic as the mayor's necessarily regressive plan, which mostly goes after the civilian drivers, as it were, and not the pros. [Red-faced update-the mayor's plan charges trucks $21 to enter Manhattan during extended business hours.]

Still, this is no easy political lift, and a plan in need of refinement is superior to a continuation of what all parties agree is an untenable status quo.