To the editor:

Living in Ashmont a few blocks from the Station, I have found it an asset to not have to worry about neighborhood parking. There was a fair balance between residents and commuters who would park and hop on the Red Line.

Lately, however there has been a proliferation of Resident Parking designations across the neighborhood that has skewed this balance and will certainly cause more streets to resort to Resident Parking areas acing out wily multi-model commuters. That’s too bad.

Suddenly on my street we are fending off dozens of displaced parkers who had relied on Carruth Street as a handy spot. I’m a little confused as to why Carruth Street would need resident parking since every house between Ashmont and Minot Street has a driveway.

How many free parking spots does each house need? For that matter, if you look around, the same is true of Lombard, Rowena, Radford Lane, and Bushnell Street; nearly every house there has a driveway as well.

Why resident parking? Given there isn’t much of a chance to develop a parking garage to attract riders to Ashmont Station, providing some local parking seems like a plus.

How about allowing all-day parking on one side of any of these streets for a fee payable at an on-street kiosk? Who wouldn’t pay $10 or so a day compared to what it costs in town?

Giving the current residents more free parking instead doesn’t make a lot of sense. Wouldn’t it be novel if the city would think about trying to get what parking a block from a T Station is worth? Besides, with the new city speed limit being 25 miles per hour, clogging up Carruth Street with cars parked at the curb would help slow down the multitude of vehicles that cut through there daily.

Carruth Street operates more like a race track now as a majority of the cars using it are certainly speeding as they were when the limit was 30 not 25.

Given that we’re signed up for Vision Zero and dreaming of 2030, it’s too bad those concepts are sounding like lip service for progressive consumption from City Hall. Bowing to auto-centrism isn’t progressive and that’s what the current switch to Resident Parking looks like here.

The car is king again in Boston under the current administration and changing the parking situation around Ashmont is one of a city full of examples that it is so.