City Hall dodges debate on new drive-throughs
Last Monday, Peterborough city councillors unanimously approved a staff report that will permit the development of a new Starbucks restaurant on Chemong Rd. across from the Walmart store. It looks to be a welcome addition to the community.
The only councillor who offered substantive questions on the proposal was Henry Clarke, who asked whether the restaurant’s proposed drivethrough was a matter that the city could regulate if it chose to do so.
The city’s director of planning and development services, while acknowledging that the city’s musty land use regulations were silent on the matter, offered the offhand response that a prohibition of the drive-through “wouldn’t fly” and “would be premature at this time.”
The question of the desirability of drive-through lanes at fast food restaurants could benefit from a much more considered response.
To begin, there is no doubting the popularity of fast food and fast access to it. An increase in the number of twoworking-parent households has driven the trend; so too have low prices derived from economies of scale, omnipresent corporate marketing and the self-imposed time pressures of modern life.
Their merging with car culture – where mobility meets convenient consumption – has proven to be an overwhelmingly powerful force. From the early drive-in restaurants with carhops to the first drive-through restaurant – Red’s Giant Hamburg on Route 66 in Missouri – the drivethrough is now as much a part of modern dining as the knife and fork. Its culture has extended well beyond fast food to include banking, pharmacies, liquor, dairies, weddings, flu shots and prayer.
My favourite example is
Pennsylvania State Representative Kevin Murphy, who installed a drivethrough at his constituency office in Scranton.
Canada’s first drive-through restaurant was a Wendy’s in Hamilton in 1975. Canadians now make more than 1.5 billion annual visits to drivethrough restaurants and more than half of their restaurant meals are eaten off premise.
Drive-through restaurants offer benefits to the elderly, people with disabilities and mobility issues, parents with children in car seats, the time challenged, the antisocial and the lazy. On the other hand, they have received persistent opposition from environmentalists, urban thinkers and many municipalities who have recoiled at their promotion of exhaust pollution from automobile idling; the wasting of fuel; the traffic hazards of automobile line ups; pedestrian safety; unhealthy lifestyles; neighbourhood noise and lights at 24 hour operations; and the severing of the civility of the retailer-customer relationship.
This is how Coun. Clarke responded to my questioning of him: “We are moving heaven and earth in to get people out of their cars, but drivethroughs work contrary to that ... often there are very few staff assigned to counters, with the bulk on the drivethrough for faster service. It concerns me that so many cars idle in the face of our anti idling bylaws, when they are near residences that can add to air pollution, noise, etc.”
Coun. Clarke has a point. For a city that professes to champion cycling, transit, a walkable community and its own Shifting Gears campaign to replace vehicle trips, drive-throughs are off target. On the other hand, a city council that continues to approve a parkway, massive car-reliant suburban subdivisions and parking lots in front yards is a perfect match for a Starbucks drive-through – a company that has even created restaurants that serve cars only.
City council will consider the application on Tuesday. As befits its recent lack of interest in meaningful debates, it will most likely prove to be passive and indifferent in the face of car culture. On July 24 – National DriveThrough Day – it will have another drive-through to celebrate.
David Goyette is a writer, political advisor and communications consultant.