On June 24, 1965, William F. Buckley officially announced his campaign for mayor of New York City. A few weeks earlier, he wrote a column (reprinted in National Review‘s June 15 issue), that outlined a platform for an at that point hypothetical mayoral candidacy. In it, he lodged two complaints that, six decades later, remain common. First, that New York has become “unpleasant and costly.” Second, that “it is unpleasant to have to pay a high cost for unpleasantness.”

Brushing aside the “legal technicalities involved” in the platform he outlined, Buckley playfully presented an eleven-pillar platform to return New York to its former glory. Of particular interest is the plan’s fourth pillar, which detailed Buckley’s solution to New York’s congested streets:

No commercial vehicle may load or unload traffic between 8:00 A.M. and 6:00 P.M. Double parkers will be fined $10; parkers with diplomatic plates (they are expected to know better), $100. And if Jimmy Hoffa disagrees, why, disagree with him. Or get out of the mayoralty race.

Buckley’s specification of the time period between 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. closely resembles the peak hours of 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. in the MTA’s Central Business District Tolling Program. Buckley’s plan, though less technical than the MTA’s, is arguably more draconian: It applies to the whole city, not just Manhattan below Central Park, and entirely forbids loading and unloading traffic at peak hours, instead of charging a price for doing so. Admittedly, Buckley’s proposal does not apply to passenger vehicles, as does the MTA’s tolling program.

If William F. Buckley Jr. himself entertained a species of Pigouvian taxation in the pages of the National Review, then it cannot be heresy for someone else to do so.