My wife and I joke that we come from different Brooklyns — she was raised in Brooklyn Heights and I was raised in Sheepshead Bay. It took her less than five minutes to get into Manhattan by taking either the 2, 4, 5, A, C, or R trains. It took no less than 40 minutes to get into Manhattan from where I lived taking a bus, either the B3 or B31, to two trains, switching at either Atlantic Avenue or DeKalb Avenue.

Before citywide transfers were put into effect, parts of the city where one needed to take a bus to a train were called “two fare zones.” Even with citywide transfers, two-fare zones still exist as a distinct geographic and psychological marker in our city’s landscape.

Two fare zones were always sort of like a regressive tax since, generally speaking, those with more money usually didn’t live where they needed to take a bus to a train. But those zones pale in comparison to the regressive nature of the congestion pricing plan introduced in Mayor Bloomberg’s recent “Sustainability Address.” Please note that I am a huge fan of Mr. Bloomberg. He is a great mayor — not just a good one, but a great one. But this plan just isn’t fair. It’s not right, it’s not equitable, and it’s inherently biased against families from Brooklyn and Queens.

This is the plan: a three-year pilot program for congestion pricing is to be put in place where the city will charge $8 for drivers who enter Manhattan south of 86th Street from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays. This will be enforced using technology similar to EZ-Pass toll tags and will not impact Manhattan drivers who are simply moving their cars from one parking spot to another. It is designed just to lessen the amount of people who are driving into Manhattan.

In a time where we are struggling, as a city and as an economy, with the issue of affordable housing, when dedicated middle class housing developments are being bought by speculators for billions of dollars and when the state is revaluating its role in subsidizing market-rate residential development, should we be codifying prejudice against our outer-borough neighbors? No.

While ground zero is still an undeveloped hole and September 11 financing aides are being used to build business towers clear across town, should we be punishing those who made the responsible decision to live in areas they can afford and commute into work? No.

While the city rezones vast tracks of real estate so as to encourage development along Brooklyn’s long neglected and ill-used East River waterfront, should we be fining those that live on the opposite coast of Brooklyn? No.

Let’s be clear, those that live near train or subway stations likely use them, as they should. And those that live anywhere near, in an expansive sense, stations should use them. Mass transit is effective, environmentally sound, and efficient. But not for everyone. Not for those in two-fare zones.

This isn’t to say that people living in two-fare zones don’t take the bus to trains. They do. The B3 is always crowded. The B31 and the B44 are standing room only during rush hour. But to actually implement a fee that will disproportionately impact those without ready access to a train station is just not good policy or politics.

New York City is in danger of losing itself. Our city is rich, almost beyond measure, but we’re supposed to be rich in a “I still buy my coffee from the cart on the corner” and “I buy paper towels in bulk” sort of way. Congestion pricing just isn’t us. It’s a mistake.

My wife and I were in London the day congestion pricing went into effect. It dominated the news. I’ll admit the sky didn’t fall because of it. But I did ask a few random, real, non-opinion maker folks in the street about what they thought. Each of them said essentially the same thing. What caught me off guard was the striking similarity their comments had to what an old woman who was about to be evicted said to me while I was clerking in Housing Court years ago: “What happened that now it’s shameful to be living in this city without money?”

Mr. Tobman is a political and communications consultant who lives in Brooklyn.