A specter is haunting New York — the specter of free parking.

 

Everywhere we citizens see the leeches of society demand more and more from the public trust to the detriment of hard-working citizens and business owners. This brief manifesto proposes five actionable, immediate initiatives to preserves the very principles of private property and bolster the fair-market economy.

 

1. End Free parking

Manhattan sits atop some of the most valuable real estate in the world; this resource is wasted on free storage of personal vehicles in the densest transit environment in the country. New York cannot abide by the free-loaders who store their BMWs and vintage Jaguars without regard for economic reality. Free parking artificially lowers the demand for paid parking in the city, denying real city businesses revenue at to the benefit of the most entitled. 

 

2. End overnight parking

The very purpose of street parking is to encourage economic activity; only drug-dealers and other degenerates conduct business at night and New York City must neither facilitate or allow this. For temporary vehicle-borne interlopers from Long Island, Staten Island, and the mainland, paid parking at a private facility prevents them from overflowing into our communities and endangering our children. 

 

3. End parking minumums for new development

Requiring parking minimums are new development is an affront to the principles of property on which America was founded. The government must not dictate how honest landowners and developers use their assets, especiallywhen these regulatory overreaches ignore the economic reality of lower demand for parking in buildings in transit-rich areas.

 

4. Punish repeat offenders

Those who refuse to abide by the rule of law must be punished proportionally as to curtail such future conduct. Repeat violators of parking and traffic laws demonstrate that monetary fines are insufficient to discourage this aberrant behavior; these violators can no longer be trusted with the privilege (not the right) to operate a dangerous motor vehicle in our community and their license to drive must be revoked. 

 

5. Implement congestion pricing

We citizens of New York must protect what is rightfully ours, our land, our air, our children, our freedom to move though our communities unmolested, from the parasites of society who demand Manhattan become their playground and parking lot free of charge. They must contribute to the coffers and the private business that they exploit through a toll designed to offset their consumption.