The modern automobile as we know it may be a dying breed. Many scientists say the world’s oil production will peak soon, pushing demand for fossil fuels beyond supply. If—or rather, when—this happens, drilling for oil will no longer be cost-effective and cars will become useless piles of steel and grease. San Francisco, perhaps more than any other American city, seems to be reminding drivers of this daily, pushing them away with devilish nickel-and-diming.

Parking, for instance, has become a constant, expensive pain. Garages downtown are grossly overpriced, and parking meters, street cleaning, and two-hour parking zones in the city amount to costly fines when drivers overstay their welcome. To keep even more vehicles away, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) may soon implement a toll for driving in sections of downtown during morning and evening rush hours. The Authority hasn’t made an official proposal yet, and the ensuing bill would need to work its way through the Board of Supervisors and California legislature, but a “congestion pricing” system could be a reality as soon as next year.

The tolls are being marketed as a solution to pollution and congestion, a way to push drivers off the streets during the busiest times of the day, but should people be punished for driving on their own roadways? The City should not charge drivers for commuting when and where they choose. Yes, the bulk of funds collected will go towards worthy causes—“back into improving public transportation, and bicycling, and walking, and other projects that would benefit travelers,” says Tilly Chang, Deputy Director for Planning of the SFCTA. But these efforts would not directly benefit the drivers being charged.

Perhaps the SFCTA is operating under a modern-day Robin Hood methodology, reasoning that money should be taken away from deep-pocketed drivers and put into efforts that will benefit the poor populace of transit passengers. Nowhere in America, however, can drivers all be categorized as wealthy. “A toll is essentially a tax, and this one would most certainly be described as regressive, which means it will fall more heavily on the poor and working class,” says John Kropf, a professor of political science at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill. “This, in my mind, solves the congestion on the backs of those who can least afford it.”

Chang assures commuters that discounts are being considered for low-income drivers, but a system for distinguishing driver’s incomes remains to be seen. Most other details of the congestion pricing system are up in the air as well. The tolls could be anywhere from fifty cents to four dollars, and the exact areas subject to tolls haven’t been decided yet. No cost estimate has been presented either, but a similar FasTrak-based tolling system along Doyle Drive (which was ultimately abandoned) was expected to cost around $12 million.

The group says their main goal is to pull cars off the road and cut down pollution, but their plan is steeped in revenue potential. “It’s more to reduce congestion, but it’s an unavoidable fact that we’d be generating money as a result,” she says. Chang and her team also claim that the current systems for producing money are going dry. “Currently, the way we fund transportation is much more inequitable,” she says.

Her main argument is that the Highway Trust Fund, which is compiled of gas tax money, is going broke. The fund faced more than $1.5 billion of deficit in September alone, but this money is used primarily to pay for nationwide road and bridge projects, not city-based transit programs. Ironically, the fund’s deficit is not a result of too many drivers. It’s the backwash of rising gas prices, a reality that has left fewer cars on the road and, consequently, fewer gas taxes to collect. One solution to this would be upping the taxes, which haven’t been altered since the eighties, but this still wouldn’t benefit San Francisco transit programs.

The SFCTA’s greatest argument in the push for congestion pricing is that the Bay Area is the second most congested metropolitan region in the nation, which results in a drop in productivity. “We have estimated that San Francisco’s economy has lost billions of dollars to congestion for many years now,” says Chang. “It’s the number one ranked problem in the Bay Area year after year.” Still, shifting this economic pressure onto drivers is not fair. If they want to endure ten mile-per-hour, bumper-to-bumper traffic, drivers should have the right without the consequence of a tax.

Until Mother Nature’s hands pry cars away from Earth, congestion will be a reality. It can be thwarted, as congestion pricing systems have proven in international cities like Stockholm and London, but never contained. And even though drivers shouldn’t be charged to kick-start the process, efforts should be made to prepare for a world without motorized vehicles. In 2004’s “The End of Suburbia,” a group of scientists studying the decline of fossil fuels argue that the key to saving the American dream is not through finding alternative forms of energy. They claim the newer ideas being pursued are either unrealistic or too expensive.

Their solution would require a step into the past and a reversion to small-town living. In this post-carbon society, cars would no longer be of use to us. We would travel on our feet, on horseback, and on bicycles and other powerless, wheeled devices. Homes would be pushed close together to maximize living space and food markets just a short walk away. Everything we could ever need would be right outside our front door, making the transition to a vehicle-less utopia seamless and believable. Sounds like San Francisco may be the perfect place to begin.