Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, a long-serving Bronx Democrat, calls the 1999 repeal “one of the biggest mistakes we ever made.” He voted against it. Given the billions that the city has cumulatively lost, he said, “it was almost a crime what happened.”

What happened was Albany at its most thoughtless. There was no vast public outcry at the time to dump the tax. It had long been an accepted, if unloved, burden, created in 1966 under the stewardship of two Republicans, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and Mayor John Lindsay, to help a city facing tough times. The rate then was 0.25 percent, which was raised to 0.45 percent five years later.

Almost out of nowhere, the tax became caught up in a 1999 race for a State Senate seat in Rockland and Orange Counties. Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature tried to outdo one another as tax cutters — without consulting City Hall, then under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, about the long-term consequences. Before anyone knew it, the tax was killed.

Much of the city’s anger fell on Sheldon Silver, the now disgraced former Assembly speaker from the Lower East Side. Former Mayor Edward Koch even accused him of treason. It was assumed that Mr. Silver would have his hometown’s back. Instead, hoping to win that Senate seat for a fellow Democrat, he shrugged off the city’s objections, saying that it had a substantial budget surplus and could readily absorb the loss of a revenue stream that provided $360 million a year back then. Ignored was the fact that budgetary black ink can quickly turn red, as it did. (And the Democrat lost the Senate race anyway.)

Resurrection of the tax is highly unlikely at present, especially with 2018 state elections looming. The odds against it are even longer than those that Mayor Bill de Blasio faces with his proposal to pay for subway repairs by taxing the income of the city’s wealthiest more heavily. But bringing back the commuter tax would correct a historical mistake.