We the undersigned are writing to urge you to prevent residential permit parking in the Upper Manhattan neighborhoods of Hudson Heights and Inwood when Congestion Pricing goes into effect. 

1) It's a form of privatization of a public resource

2) It discriminates against those who also live in the neighborhood, do not own cars, and yet who occasionally rent one, for example once a month. Residential parking permits will deprive us of the ability to park a rental car in our own neighborhood. Yet we are the ones who use cars only when we need them.

3) Where there is permitted residential parking, there is no place anywhere that visitors, family or guests can park. This anti-social, anti-family, idea will not "improve the parking situation in our neighborhood", it will devastate it like it has on (highly privatized) Roosevelt Island.

4) While there is a need for local residents who live here but work outside of the city, necessitating a car, why is that more important than those who live outside of the city and earn income in the city, also necessitating a car? Since both groups of people must pay income taxes to the city (by virtue of work or residence), it unfairly discriminates against once class of city taxpayers (and will probably be found to be unconstitutional because of that).

5) It establishes car parking as a "right" at a time, in light of climate change, when (arguably) fewer people should even own cars, and more people should be using public transit whenever possible.

6) Related to (5), establishing a right to parking (in effect recognizing local residents' right to parking in this way) would create another hurdle to the construction of much-needed bicycle lanes for the protection of cyclists who are doing more to reduce the city's carbon footprint and reduce congestion than are any car-owners complaining about limited street parking

7) Establishing permitted residential parking will necessitate a new paid bureaucracy, paid by the city taxes of all, for the benefit of a minority who are polluting car-owners.

8) People who choose to have 3 children must pay more for a larger apartment than a single person. There's a reasonable argument that those who choose to own a car should be paying for commercial parking in a garage and not crowding the streets as though it were a right.

9) Tragedy of the Commons: like rent-control, permitted local parking benefits established residents and discriminates against newer residents who will be unable to get a local parking permit when they have all been scarfed up in advance by those already here