WAUKESHA, Wis. —

The Waukesha Christmas Parade returned to downtown Waukesha Sunday one year after a driver plowed through the same event killing six people and injuring dozens more.

The theme of this year's parade was Peace on Earth.

There were 80 groups marching in the parade, many of which are the same that were struck by tragedy including the Waukesha Blazers baseball club, the Dancing Grannies and Catholic Communities of Waukesha.

Several floats were decorated by Waukesha South High School band members and other students in honor of last year's victims.

Terry Rutledge has been a part of the Waukesha community for 45 years and was in the parade last year with the Salvation Army.

On Sunday, he drove a decorated plow.

Emotions were running high not only for the people who performed in the parade but also for those who attended.

"Last year after the parade we all came together, and it's just nice that even a year later, we're all still together, so it kind of solidified the whole community and kept us solidified for the whole year. The spirit never went away for Waukesha Strong," said Andrea Dorantes, who attended last year's parade.

Santa and Mrs. Claus were the last attraction in the parade.

The parade started at 4 p.m. along a new route and ended just before 5:30 p.m.

It began at Cutler Park, near Maple and Wisconsin avenues. It then went east along Main Street, south on Barstow Street and ended back at Cutler Park.

For some, it was an opportunity to heal.

"It's a very full circle moment being back. Immediately after the events of last year I started therapy so that way I could start healing right away so this is definitely the last step in my healing process," said Joe Eisenman, who attended last year's parade.

For others, like Eisenman's father, it was an opportunity to offer support.

"I just went through everything that he went through last year. We weren't here but we went through it when he was here," said Chris Eisenman.

The parade offered an opportunity for Waukesha to redefine its Christmas parade.

"Last year brought a lot of terror and a lot of confusion, but this year I honestly see nothing but happiness. That's definitely something that's different, but it's also definitely something that's amazing," said Joe Eisenman.

Parade attendees created good memories to overshadow the bad ones.

"We were here right in front of the Dancing Granny troop. So we saw a lot that day so it'll be good to see them back in the parade," said Dorantes.

Healing Hearts of Wisconsin was on hand at Sunday's parade. The organization provides support for grieving children and their families. They had a tent sent up at Cutler Park. The group also had personnel along the parade route to provide support to those struggling.

Legitimate-looking fake parking tickets are popping up on windshields across the U.S.

Last month, the Santa Cruz Police Department reported a 19-year-old was arrested after placing fraudulent citations that included a QR code on windshields. The police said the fake citations directed drivers to a website for payment.

Police in Scottsdale, Arizona, reported that drivers in the area have received fraudulent parking tickets.

Melanie McGovern, International Association of Better Business Bureaus public relations director, said it has fielded reports across the U.S. of similar scams. The Better Business Bureau issued an alert on this type of scam last week.

“It is so easy to print these fake tickets, stick them on cars, especially if they slap a QR code on them,” McGovern said. “Most people like the convenience of scanning and being able to pay right there. That is where this gets tricky. That is why consumers have to be alert on where they’re parking.”

She said it is not always easy to know if a parking ticket is legitimate.

“A lot of municipalities will subcontract parking now. They’ll use a private company to manage their parking tickets,” McGovern said. “Parking garages, there are so many different entities managing this, that is where it confuses the consumer a lot. Are you paying the city? Are you paying the parking garage people? Are you paying the lot people? That is what scammers are taking advantage of.”

More cities are also replacing coin meters with mobile apps. McGovern said drivers should pay close attention to the app they’re downloading as fake apps may appear with similar names.

Many legitimate parking companies also use services like PayPal and Venmo for payments, meaning it might not always be a scam if you’re being asked to pay through one of these services.

McGovern said she recently received a parking ticket. She called the city to confirm the ticket she received was legitimate.

“People really need to be careful if they’re parking in a garage or on a ramp to know does the municipality own the ramp. Does a private company own the ramp?” she said. “Where are the tickets? How do you pay the tickets? Where do you get the tickets?… Familiarizing yourself with the parking before you’re in a situation where you’re not sure what to do and you make a mistake.”

America is jammed with parking spots.

Related video above: UN says nations nowhere near climate goals

Approximately 2 billion parking spots cover the country, enough to pave over the entire state of Connecticut. From baseball stadiums in Los Angeles to malls in Atlanta, parking lots are bigger than the buildings they surround.

Cities have built so much parking through a policy few people know — minimum parking requirements. Cities don't just require parking spaces for nearly every office, mall, store, movie theater, bowling alley, restaurant and other building, those requirements often include a certain number of spots for every building.

Mandatory parking minimums helped shape the modern makeup of American cities. They become a self-fulfilling prophecy, in effect. More parking spaces mean bigger parking lots. Bigger parking lots mean more buildings isolated from roads and sidewalks, separated from arterial infrastructure by vast oceans of asphalt. Faced with so much mandatory automotive-centric infrastructure, many people abandon walking and choose to drive.

Parking requirements have come with other downsides, and a growing number of cities and towns — in both Republican and Democratic-led areas — are now reforming their parking rules. The effort to end parking requirements has gained federal support as well.

In their zoning codes, many cities mandated that any new or re-purposed real estate projects include a minimum number of off-street parking spaces, often based on the size of the development or type of land use.

But now, U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia, a Democrat from California, recently introduced a bill that would eliminate parking minimums for new affordable residential, retail, industrial and commercial construction. Separately, he introduced legislation to scrap parking requirements close to public transit.

Affordable housing, environmental and public transportation advocates say parking minimums reduce the supply of housing and raise costs. Developers often bundle the costs of parking in rent or housing prices.

It costs about $28,000 to build a parking spot, according to WGI, a construction engineering company. Construction costs are highest in New York City, where it's notoriously difficult to find a spot. A new parking spot in the city runs up to $36,000, not including the cost of buying the land.

Parking rules deter developers and businesses that can't afford to construct the required parking and spaces that could have held apartments have instead been swallowed up by parking mandates.

They also increase traffic congestion, carbon emissions and make cities less walkable, critics say.

They are unequal because everyone pays for them — even people who don't own or can't afford a car.

"It damages the economy because everything everywhere has to include the cost of parking," said Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at UCLA and an evangelist of anti-parking mandates. "It's a long train of consequences."

Arbitrary rules

Parking requirements began a century ago.

By the 1920s, New York City, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities were jammed with cars on the curbs. To manage this problem, cities began adding newly-invented parking meters in their densest areas, hoping to both keep the number of cars to those who truly needed them and to make some money at the same time. They also created off-street parking requirements for new buildings,

The mandates accelerated during the postwar period as more people drove, highways developed and suburbanization swept the country.

Minimum parking laws "spread faster than any other planning regulation ever has," Shoup said. "They went from nowhere to everywhere."

Policymakers, planners and developers designed cities and suburbs with the goal of providing everyone — even if they didn't drive — ample places to park.

"Planners were responding to what people wanted without thinking there would be terrible effects in the long run," he said.

The requirements were often arbitrary and puzzling, said Tony Jordan, the co-founder of Parking Reform Network.

A few examples Jordan has found: Tiny Woodbury, Georgia, population 905, has dozens of specific parking mandates, including separate regulations for heliports and helistops. (Five spaces per helistop, and one per 1,000 square feet of heliports.)

SeaTac, Washington, requires one parking spot at butterfly and moth breeding facilities for every 150 square feet of office or retail space.

Dallas requires one parking space for every million gallons of capacity at a sewage treatment plant, but two parking spaces for a water treatment plant.

"Take a sample of any 10 municipalities almost anywhere in the country and you'll find a similar set of contradictions and headscratchers," Jordan said.

Cities reverse course

In Shoup's influential 2005 book, "The High Cost of Free Parking," he recommended that cities should remove off-street parking requirements, charge demand-based prices for curb parking – the lowest prices that will leave one or two open spaces on each block to alleviate parking shortages – and spend the meter revenue to improve public services.

His ideas are having a moment.

Last year, 11 cities ended their minimum parking mandates, including Raleigh, Anchorage and Lexington, Kentucky, according to the Parking Reform Network, a nonprofit group that researches and advocates for parking policy changes.

California became the first state to pass legislation ending parking minimums for new developments close to public transit.

Four cities have ended them so far in 2023, including Richmond, Virginia.

"The parking minimums have contributed to urban sprawl, lack of abundant and affordable housing, and automobile dependency," said a staff report by Richmond's Department of Planning.

Richmond and other cities will allow property owners to decide how much parking to add to their proposed developments, allowing market forces to determine how many parking spots are needed.

Some cities, including Nashville, are moving in the exact opposite direction of parking minimums, creating maximum parking requirements that cap the number of spots developers can build.

Affordable housing

Cities are looking for ways to reinvent their public spaces after the damaging impact of the pandemic. They also face a lack of affordable housing.

Scrapping minimum parking requirements could help both challenges. Instead of developers setting aside land to build parking, it could be turned into smaller apartment complexes, advocates say.

In Buffalo and Seattle, which ended parking minimums in 2017 and 2012 respectively, nearly 70% of new homes built after parking reforms would not have been allowed under the previous rules, according to research from Sightline Institute, a non-partisan sustainability advocacy group.

In Buffalo, developers built less parking than previously required and made parking an amenity, charging individual users fees rather than bundling it into rent or housing prices, researchers at the University at Buffalo found.

Seattle developers built 40% less parking than would have been required prior to the reforms, resulting in 18,000 fewer parking spaces, researchers at Santa Clara University found.

"These findings highlight the impact that policymakers can have by reducing or eliminating off-street parking requirements," the researchers said.

A better policy, Brookings Institution researchers said in a 2020 report on parking minimums, would be to let developers and businesses decide how much off-street parking to build.

In places where demand for parking is high, developers will choose to build spots, the researchers predict.

But in places with an oversupply of parking spots and a shortage of affordable housing, they say, "parking minimums are 20th-century relics that deserve to be retired."

COVINGTON, Ky. — Construction on a new pedestrian bridge in downtown Covington will mean traffic and parking headaches Tuesday, city officials said.

Three 117-foot-long semi-trailers will deliver three 96,000-pound concrete beams Tuesday morning as part of what will become a new mixed-use bridge that will span the CSX railroad tracks at 11th Street between Madison Avenue and Russell Street.

In a news release, a city spokesperson said the trucks will arrive from Lexington around 10:30 a.m., although potential gridlock along Interstate 71/75 could delay that arrival. The trucks will exit the freeway at 12th Street before maneuvering along Pike, Seventh, Scott, West 10th and North Washington streets before a crane unloads them.

Drivers should expect restricted parking along those streets, the release indicated.

The new 12-feet-wide bridge will replace a retired span that crews demolished earlier this year. It will accommodate all types of non-vehicular traffic, including walkers, runners and bicyclists.

HAMILTON, Ohio — Hamilton’s original plan was to activate its new downtown parking-meter kiosks in March 2020, but then COVID-19 arrived. With businesses reopening to customers, the city now plans to activate the machines July 12, according to the Journal-News.

In the meantime, people parking near the kiosks on parts of High and Dayton streets and RIverfront Plaza (near The Marcum apartment and retail development) are receiving fliers on their windshields telling them that starting July 12, parking tickets soon will be written.

The parking enforcement is not an effort to make money for the city, said Rich Engle, Hamilton’s director of engineering.

Parking enforcement is never a profit-maker for city government, he said: “It’s always a deficit for the city. We just want to make sure there’s spaces available a potential customer drives through High Street or Main Street, that we have parking spaces available.”

So far, new parking kiosks aren’t on Main Street, but that is being considered, Engle said.

The kiosks will charge 50 cents per hour, for a maximum of two or three hours, depending on the location. Parkers will be able to pay the meters using coins, credit cards and soon, an app called Passport, he said.

He said for shops and restaurants, it’s important to have a free flow of parking nearby so customers are encouraged to pull in to park. The two-hour parking limits enforced by the meters are intended to keep nearby residents and employees from using parking for long periods.

Parking will be enforced from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. In addition to that, evening hours also will be enforced along Riverfront Plaza from 5 to 10 p.m., Thursday through Saturday, when nearby restaurants and bars have some of their busiest hours.

Fines for violations are $10, if the penalty is paid within 48 hours from midnight of the violation date the citation was issued. If it is paid between 48 and 96 hours afterward, the fine climbs to $20. After that, the fine climbs to $30.

The city will continue its use of the ‘Curbside Hamilton’ parking spaces in front shops and restaurants the city created early in the pandemic. Those areas, which are painted green, allow free parking for 10 minutes while people either park and wait for food and beverages either to be brought out to them or while they quickly go inside to make the pickups.

“We have those strategically placed all over the urban core,” said Mallory Greenham, small-business specialist for the city. “In fact, we’re getting ready to repaint those spots — some of them faded over the winter — and add a few more spots to places we think would benefit.”

Some of those spaces are along Main Street, in the downtown, in German Village, with another soon to be added in Lindenwald’s business district, Greenham said.

Each kiosk serves several parking spaces. After parking, people need to find the nearest kiosk and enter their license plate number before paying the parking fee.

The kiosks cost $85,000. City Manager Joshua Smith has said the city’s only goal financially is to recover costs of those kiosks plus their maintenance and costs of parking enforcement, not to make profits.

CINCINNATI — As TQL Stadium opens for FC Cincinnati's home opener, here's what fans should know about parking before heading to a match.

Season parking pass holders will have access to parking close to the stadium, which includes:

• The East Garage on the stadium site
• The West Premium Lot in the rear of the stadium
• The newly built West End garage north of the stadium with about 800 parking spots
• The Town Center Garage across from Music Hall on Central Parkway.

The Washington Park Garage is also offering parking sign-ups for FC Cincinnati fans, but this garage also has spots set aside for season parking pass holders.

Fans can also get their steps in by parking at the Mercer Commons Garage, the Ziegler Park Garage or the Kroger Garage and walking between 15 and 20 minutes to the stadium.

The stadium is nestled into the West End neighborhood where some might try their luck with street parking, but FC Cincinnati has a map online that shows that parking in residential neighborhoods is off limits. Residents hope fans respect this.

"They’re not going to want to pay to park, so they’re going to think they can come over here, which is free parking, and it’s not," Yona Dowdell, a West End resident, said. "They don’t live over here to park over here.”