St. John’s city council started 2009 by becoming the first
Canadian municipal power to pass a moratorium on drive-thrus.
The problem was traffic: inconvenient, hazardous lineups right into
the highway, especially around the ever-popular, always fresh Canadian
wunderkind, Timmy Hortons. When the moratorium was approved, the mayor,
deputy mayor and councillors lined up to proclaim the dangers of
drive-thrus while praising Tim Hortons’ corporate citizenship. You
can’t blame their doughnuts for being so delicious, they told
Canada.
Two weeks later, St. John’s became the first Canadian city to
rescind its drive-thru moratorium, voting it down unanimously after a
meeting with Tim Hortons. “I think council jumped the gun,” explains
councillor Tom Hann. “We looked closer at the drive-thru permits, and
we got a very good plan from Tim Hortons.”
Hortons promises myriad measures to curb traffic around its
drive-thrus, including double lanes, additional overflow parking space
and better layout. Hann adds that council was concerned about sending
an “anti-business” message about St. John’s.
Environment wasn’t part of St. John’s rationale for a moratorium,
but I was hoping this would be the start of a domino effect. Other
Canadian cities have considered restrictions on drive-thrus, including
North Vancouver, Edmonton, several mid-sized Ontario cities and
Kentville, NS. Toronto is the only city to have acted, banning new
drive-thrus in residential and mixed-use neighbourhoods.
St. John’s could have been the first bold move away from a
hyper-convenient, sedentary culture that is killing us, fast. Only in
that culture could a move to get people out of their cars, if even for
the time it takes to pour a cup of coffee, be considered
“anti-business.”
Maybe even HRM, which has never considered explicitly regulating
drive-thrus on environmental grounds, would have gotten in the act.
According to Denise Schofield, HRM’s manager of development
engineering, our claim to fame regarding drive-thrus is requiring “a
traffic impact study based on the volume of traffic, the length of the
drive-thru lane, et cetera. Not every municipality requires that.” Like
Toronto, our new drive-thrus don’t typically assault residential areas,
because they aren’t zoned for restaurants.
Surely we can do better. Drive-thrus are a symbol of everything
wrong with our culture. It’s not good enough that someone else grows,
ships and makes our coffee for us, oh no, it has to be delivered direct
to our SUV window as we idle in a line of foreign-made, big-ticket,
steel-and-glass weapons of local destruction we like to call cars.
And drive-thrus don’t even work, according to Kentville town
councillor Eric Bollard, who unsuccessfully proposed a moratorium in
his town last year. “Most of the time you can go into the restaurant
and get your order, come out and see the same cars waiting in the
drive-thru as were there when you went in,” he says.
But drive-thrus are more than just a symbol. Their contribution to
melting ice caps is manifest, according to a new study of emissions at
six drive-thrus in “the HRM urban core” by Clean Nova Scotia. According
to Gina Patterson, the non-profit’s DriveWiser coordinator, “when you
talk about climate change emissions, you necessarily have more in a
drive-thru than parking and going in.”
The study categorizes drive-thrus by what they sell and how much
traffic they get, and randomly observes restaurants from each category.
Tim Hortons commissioned a less representative study of four
drive-thrus and one regular-parking, fast-food joint in Ontario. They
concluded that air quality was actually worse at the regular-parking
only location, but that location happens to be on Bank Street in
downtown Ottawa. Yet, “some of the drive-thrus they look at are in low
density areas,” Patterson says. It’s like comparing a city apple to a
country orange.
Councillor Hann of St. John’s acknowledges the environmental danger,
but is satisfied that Tim Hortons is handling that issue. “If you’ve
got 10 cars waiting you have an environmental issue, but taking steps
to get cars moving cuts down on the number of idlers.” Unfortunately,
it does so by building another parking lot and another traffic
lane.
Which brings me back to the cultural issue. Worse than sitting in a
car in a miniature-Beijing airfield is the fact that, as our old-world
carbon economy collapses around us, we continue to build infrastructure
around sitting in cars whether they’re moving or not.
As Kentville’s Eric Bolland, who hopes to pass a revised drive-thru
moratorium this year, says, “If gas is at a dollar a litre, you can
save 10 cents by turning your car off and going inside to get your
coffee, and you get it quicker.”
Would you support an HRM ban on drive-thrus? Let
Chris Benjamin know at chrisb@thecoast.ca.
Related Stories
Park the drive-thru
The Grand Parade podcast: It’s time for Halifax to ban drive-thrus for real
This article appears in Feb 5-11, 2009.
The environmental movement could make a lot more friends by staying away from symbolic attempts to save the planet like this one that do little except piss people off. The hyperbole does not help the cause either.
+1
So what would you propose? Suggestions would be nice. Also – is the City of St John’s “the environmental movement”?
Here are a few suggestions. Stop making ridiculously overblown statements like:
“…a hyper-convenient, sedentary culture that is killing us, fast”; “Their contribution to melting ice caps is manifest…”; and this whopper:
“Drive-thrus are a symbol of everything wrong with our culture. It’s not good enough that someone else grows, ships and makes our coffee for us, oh no, it has to be delivered direct to our SUV window as we idle in a line of foreign-made, big-ticket, steel-and-glass weapons of local destruction we like to call cars.”
When the author discovers how to grow coffee here he should buy some land and start doing it. But god forbid that anyone driving something other than a Focus drinks the stuff. Hyperbole is what the enviro movement lives on, and it is what will kill it eventually.
Haha, good one. I wonder why all those fuckers protesting the chebucto road widening aren’t killing weekends moving from drive-thru to drive-thru protesting that shit.
That article reads like the Lululemon “Manifesto” garbage you see their(lululemon) people coming up with. My suggestion would be to avoid turning people off of saving the planet by spouting crap like that and to learn to pick your battles.
Our society is lazy – it is all about convenience – fast food and the ever ready coffee – and you can have it all (provided you have the $) without moving from your comfy car. Besides the environmental issues (and we do need to be concerned about them even if if we do the small stuff like not idle cars in line ups – any line ups), there are the health issues that our lazyness contribute to. Walking into the coffee shop, parking at the end of the lot and walking a few extra feet to the grocery store all help us keep fit. Cooking at home with natural ingredients vs convenience foods help us keep healthy. Lets look after ourselves and the environment. Interesting read on your column.
EB, you forgot the part about wearing your hairshirt too.
Drive thrus at Tim Hortons are ridiculous, but complaining about them as if they are a symbol of our decaying culture is just as ridiculous. The energy used to manufacture coffee cups and the garbage that is left behind by them is a far more significant and unsightly problem. This is a weak article.
Hey, Keith and Cranky, which one of you is Stadler and which one is Waldorf? Your main suggestion is kind of hard for a columnist: don’t write using rhetoric. I think Chris B’s use of the drive thru as a symbol is pretty potent. Despite any hyperbole in the article, as loyal Coast readers and commenters, I take it you’re mostly onside as environmentalists, just as long as it doesn’t affect your drive thru cuppa Steve-O-Reno’s?
Is Benny a regular contributor? If he is going to be I think I might actually have to stop reading The Coast, even though its free, the cost to my sanity won’t be able to handle it.
Some examples:
always fresh Canadian wunderkind, Timmy Hortons ?
Drive-thrus are a symbol of everything wrong with our culture. It’s not good enough that someone else grows, ships and makes our coffee for us, oh no, it has to be delivered direct to our SUV window as we idle in a line of foreign-made, big-ticket, steel-and-glass weapons of local destruction we like to call cars. ?
miniature-Beijing airfield ?
old-world carbon economy collapses around us, we continue to build infrastructure around sitting in cars whether they’re moving or not. ?
I think I wrote something like this in 2nd Year English. I got a C
Ha ha Andy. Good one. I think I resemble Waldorf more than Stadler.
Look, the rhetoric distracts from what exactly the article is about. By distract, I mean it makes me want to laugh at it and not take it seriously. By throwing in shit like he did he’s basically preaching to the choir because I’m thinking they’re the only ones that are going to be saying “yeah, man, thats so true, fight the POWER” where everyone else is going to get a paragraph or two in and say this guys a wank and move on to the Leslie Lower article or whatever.
I “get” what he is getting at, but anybody on the fence is probably going to be turned off by it, not turned on.
For what its worth, I detest Tim Hortons (why ben didn’t go one step farther and call it “Timmy Hoes” is beyond me) and all that it stands for, drive-thrus and all. I buy Fair Trade coffee from a local indy owner operated merchant and don’t hit the steve-o-renos drive thru because I’m on a bike. I’ve been cycling to work from and to various places in metro for pretty close to 20 years, so close that when I did the math even I was surprised at how long I’ve been commuting by bike around here. And I own a car (I’m such a traitor). I’m one of those guys who makes a difference but doesn’t wave a flag or make his own clothes.
What the fuck does “miniature-Beijing airfield” even mean? WTF!?! You get a D pending a re-write.
Of course banning drive-thrus will not solve the problems of the world, but it is symbolic, and every little bit helps, does it not?
In my opinion, the most damaging aspect of drive-thrus is that they keep people isolated from one another rather than engaging in what should be a social activity–getting a coffee/bite to eat. We are a sad society.
Great article, Chris.
I think that banning drive-thrus would be indeed a good idea, just the fact that the fat people sitting in their car would need to waddle to McD’s to get their burgers makes me all giddy. Same goes for coffee… Keith and Cranky make good statements, especially about the environmentalist movement in general (by that I mean more than the city of St. John’s, Andy); they love the smell of their own farts and have their heads up their asses… You know what? We all can’t afford Hybrids, but we do what we can (I take the bus to and from work as much as I can, walk to the grocery store when I live 10 minutes away) and it’s bullshit like this that belittle those actions.
Ok, I actually found other articles by Chris and did actually read some of them when they were first printed. I thought that quite a few of them were actually alright back when I read them. Maybe Chris was off his game or submitted a rough draft by mistake?
It is a fun read, though. How could it not be with stuff like “…we idle in a line of foreign-made, big-ticket, steel-and-glass weapons of local destruction we like to call cars.”
I don’t like to call them cars, I actually do call them cars. yep.
“weapons of local destruction”. fuck me, you’ve got me grinning from ear to ear with that cherry.
ah
Carly, do you really want to ‘mingle’ with the people hanging out at Tim Hortons? Please, the “double-double” crowd is nothing like your Coburg Coffee House, believe me.
Is it necessary that we “define” ourselves like the rest of the commenters seem to be? “Yer either a kneejerk hairy hippy or you’re oneofus”?
I don’t own a car, I am what most of you would call a hippy if you read a description of me, and wouldn’t if you met me… and I do not judge others based on what side of the drive-thru line people are on. Most of my environmentalist colleagues and friends don’t either, but we are accustomed to people assuming we’re judging. Relax. We’re not keeping score.
I’d be satisfied if the drivers of the vehicles sitting in the drive-thru lines would redirect their exhaust into the cab of their vehicle by way of a very environmental sound rubber hose. Win/win situation.
Still my fave piece of infotainment, bar none.