Not to be callous but, so what? Just because you’re poor means you deserve to be exempt from measures to reduce traffic? Should poor people get tax free cigarettes or $0 fines for littering too?

I can buy that excuse in SF which has a lot of poor exurban car commuters by necessity, but NYC has a much bigger public transit network and parking is even more scarce and expensive in Manhattan than in SF (so unless you’re just taking a shortcut through Manhattan, which this is intentionally penalizing, you’re going to be paying a lot for parking anyway and are probably already wealthy).