Over the weekend, I wrote about trying to ease traffic jams in New York City.

Mayor Bloomberg has proposed charging to drive in the most congested parts of Manhattan during business hours, but he needs approval from Albany.

And Assemblyman Richard Brodsky doesn’t like the plan, hasn’t liked it from the start and prefers limiting cars based on license plate numbers. He argues congestion pricing favors the wealthy.

Here are some comments from a reader, Leonard Hyman, which make a great deal of sense.

“I was intrigued by the odd-even plate scheme, because they did something like that in Sao Paulo, and I remember my relatives down there switching from the odd to the even license plate car in the family in order to accommodate the rules without cutting down on the driving,” he wrote.

Rich commuters with more than one car would drive into Manhattan at will. Those less affluent would take public transportation without the improvements that Bloomberg’s plan promised.

“A number of cities have congestion pricing in place. Why not find out why, figure out what did and didn’t work, and try it? Every public policy has unintended consequences, and one way to avoid some of them is to learn from other people’s experiences, preferably from real people, not from politicians.”

Why not?