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Banning Drive Thrus - Printable Version

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Banning Drive Thrus - Spokes - 08-29-2018

A study to look at potentially banning fast food drive Thrus.  Interesting.  Thoughts?

https://globalnews.ca/news/4403821/drive-thru-ban-study-university-alberta/?utm_source=Municipal+World+Daily&utm_campaign=6e9516bf49-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_06_22_01_12_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a1ce9dc899-6e9516bf49-67144157


RE: Banning Drive Thrus - embe - 08-29-2018

I'm all for it. The last couple times in a drive thru the line (of cars) was so long I parked and got out.

The point about unhealthy eating may have some merit. Most people go to a drive thru since it's less effort. And I hate to say it but that laziness continues in some cases when their garbage gets pitched out the window further up the road.


RE: Banning Drive Thrus - timio - 08-29-2018

As a person who generally gets out and walks in, even if the lineup in the drive-thru is huge and there's only one or two people in line inside, the staff seem to prioritize the drive-thru customers to the point where it takes me the same amount of time to get through line as it would have if I stayed in the car.

This has happened at multiple chains regardless of average size of order.

One reason: There's no giant flashing clock keeping track of walk-in orders.


RE: Banning Drive Thrus - ijmorlan - 08-29-2018

Terrible idea. Supposedly, we live in a free country. This doesn’t mean that anything goes, but banning drive thrus is pretty far from anything approximating a reasonable restriction on what people are able to do.

If there are externalities, they can legitimately be internalized by regulation.


RE: Banning Drive Thrus - tomh009 - 08-29-2018

(08-29-2018, 08:40 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Terrible idea. Supposedly, we live in a free country. This doesn’t mean that anything goes, but banning drive thrus is pretty far from anything approximating a reasonable restriction on what people are able to do.

If there are externalities, they can legitimately be internalized by regulation.

Zoning is the right mechanism here. Toronto, for example, does not allow drive-throughs within or next to residential zoning.


RE: Banning Drive Thrus - Canard - 09-12-2018

Nope.


RE: Banning Drive Thrus - jeffster - 09-13-2018

(08-29-2018, 05:23 PM)Spokes Wrote: A study to look at potentially banning fast food drive Thrus.  Interesting.  Thoughts?

https://globalnews.ca/news/4403821/drive-thru-ban-study-university-alberta/?utm_source=Municipal+World+Daily&utm_campaign=6e9516bf49-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_06_22_01_12_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a1ce9dc899-6e9516bf49-67144157

Nope. Doesn't work for a lot of people. 1. For busy establishments like McDonald's or Tim Hortons, there might not be enough parking to accommodate their customer base. Drive thru's reduce need for property space. 2. Doesn't work for young families; parents carting kids around, wanting a McHappy meal, will have a hard time if they're just looking for food, dragging out 2 year old and a 1 year old is anything but fun.

Of course, though, if the idea is to get people off of junk food and overpriced coffee, I'd be all for it.


RE: Banning Drive Thrus - clasher - 09-13-2018

They should keep them away from intersections in the future... even though that's the best location for business they tend to snarl traffic a bit... like the timmies at Belmont/Glasgow is kind of annoying. I think a keurig at home is a faster option for the time-pressed people anyway, most timmies seem so busy I don't see how it saves any time in the morning.


RE: Banning Drive Thrus - plam - 09-14-2018

(09-13-2018, 04:05 PM)jeffster Wrote:
(08-29-2018, 05:23 PM)Spokes Wrote: A study to look at potentially banning fast food drive Thrus.  Interesting.  Thoughts?

https://globalnews.ca/news/4403821/drive-thru-ban-study-university-alberta/?utm_source=Municipal+World+Daily&utm_campaign=6e9516bf49-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_06_22_01_12_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a1ce9dc899-6e9516bf49-67144157

Nope. Doesn't work for a lot of people. 1. For busy establishments like McDonald's or Tim Hortons, there might not be enough parking to accommodate their customer base.  Drive thru's reduce need for property space. 2. Doesn't work for young families; parents carting kids around, wanting a McHappy meal, will have a hard time if they're just looking for food, dragging out 2 year old and a 1 year old is anything but fun.

Of course, though, if the idea is to get people off of junk food and overpriced coffee, I'd be all for it.

People get concerned about lack of parking but it's often not a thing in reality. Parking requirements are kind of set through inertia (and sometimes for once-a-year peak demand) and there are very few places that don't have enough parking. Not 0, but very few.

Most places already have more parking requirement than floor space requirement, and that's consistent with my image of fast-food restaurants around here:

https://graphingparking.com/2013/02/06/parking-requirements-for-restaurants/

In 2016, Ottawa proposed 20 parking spots for a 400 m^2 restaurant, and another 5 for each 100 m^2 thereafter, a reduction from far higher previous requirements (which were probably too high).

There are places in the world where people can't conveniently drive their cars everywhere. These places don't have drive thrus. Why don't we strive to be like those places?


RE: Banning Drive Thrus - ijmorlan - 09-14-2018

(09-14-2018, 09:24 AM)plam Wrote: People get concerned about lack of parking but it's often not a thing in reality. Parking requirements are kind of set through inertia (and sometimes for once-a-year peak demand) and there are very few places that don't have enough parking. Not 0, but very few.

And weirdly, parking is one of the few things required to be provided in such quantities that the market price is zero.

Almost anything else needed for a business is up to the business owner. For example, a restaurant that didn’t have enough cutlery would get bad reviews and word of mouth when its customers talked about how they had to eat spaghetti with their fingers or whatever. Where are the cutlery minimums? Only parking is required to be provided in certain quantities. Strangely, parking is very expensive to provide; so the excess parking required by zoning is a real drag on the economy, in a way that a requirement for a restaurant to have one fork per square foot would not be.

The only good parking minimum is a dead parking minimum. The Province should have abolished parking minima province-wide in the Places to Grow Act.


RE: Banning Drive Thrus - danbrotherston - 09-14-2018

(09-14-2018, 12:45 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:
(09-14-2018, 09:24 AM)plam Wrote: People get concerned about lack of parking but it's often not a thing in reality. Parking requirements are kind of set through inertia (and sometimes for once-a-year peak demand) and there are very few places that don't have enough parking. Not 0, but very few.

And weirdly, parking is one of the few things required to be provided in such quantities that the market price is zero.

Almost anything else needed for a business is up to the business owner. For example, a restaurant that didn’t have enough cutlery would get bad reviews and word of mouth when its customers talked about how they had to eat spaghetti with their fingers or whatever. Where are the cutlery minimums? Only parking is required to be provided in certain quantities. Strangely, parking is very expensive to provide; so the excess parking required by zoning is a real drag on the economy, in a way that a requirement for a restaurant to have one fork per square foot would not be.

The only good parking minimum is a dead parking minimum. The Province should have abolished parking minima province-wide in the Places to Grow Act.

*cough* https://www.amazon.ca/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X/ref=sr_1_2/140-4254656-2336206?ie=UTF8&qid=1536943608&sr=8-2&keywords=the+high+cost+of+free+parking&dpID=51r9KSb4DuL&preST=_SY264_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch *cough*