Pricing always gets you there faster, and the public likes it. Weak incentives are a political dead end. They get no one there faster and would be seen, correctly, as nothing but another tax. If there is any hope of getting to full-scale smog and congestion pricing, it will be from baby steps that produce visible benefits, not baby steps that don't. The general public in Southern California is surprisingly willing to try road pricing.
Nothing is either good or bad but alternatives make it so.
The existing system is so colossally wasteful that almost any higher-resolution alternative would be an improvement. The system as a whole would be much less regressive than what we have now. It is unjust and unwise to dither over a pound of equity while perpetuating the tons of hours of life and health that the average household in the Basin loses every year to smog and congestion. They will never get it back.