The Ontario Restaurant Hotel & Motel Association (ORHMA) countered with the signatures of 60,000 people who supported the association’s position that drive-thrus have a place in the community. Ultimately, the commission chose to impose tougher regulations rather than a moratorium.

Michelle Saunders, director of government affairs for the ORHMA, says the association opposes any attempt to limit drive-thrus but not reasonable attempts to regulate them. She also casts doubt on claims that drive-thrus are bad for the environment.

“I think part of it is that there is a genuine desire to make policy changes that improve the environment,” she says. “There’s also an assumption that because cars are idling in drive-thrus that drive-thrus must be bad. That assumption is false.”

A study released in May and conducted by wind engineering consulting services firm RWDI on behalf of Tim Hortons parent company TDL Group Corp. supports that claim. The study concluded that a Tim Hortons restaurant with no drive-thru actually produces higher emissions per vehicle than one with a drive-thru, because of emissions from starting up vehicles, traveling to and from parking spaces, and congestion that occurs in the parking lot. To provide perspective, the study says the greenhouse-gas emissions from a vehicle using a Tim Hortons drive-thru are less than 5 percent of those from a typical 30-minute commute.

But Amanda Dacyk, a graduate student studying natural resource economics at the University of Alberta who also was involved with the drive-thru emissions study conducted there, says there’s an important difference to be taken into account.

“Drive-thrus are an unnecessary service for many people,” she says. “They’re comparing it with services that are necessary.”

Even so, there are other implications to consider.

“If we didn’t have the drive-thrus, we would end up with the same amount of customers, but they would be congested in the parking lot,” Saunders says. “We would still have cars idling and shutting off and turning back on their engines, which creates more emissions. We’d have a greater [parking] lot size, more asphalt, more water runoff, more environmental consequences.”

Joyce Reynolds, executive vice president of government affairs for the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association (CRFA), also downplays allegations that cars idling in drive-thru lanes cause significant amounts of pollution.

“When you look at idling, it contributes less than 0.2 percent of all greenhouse-gas emission in Canada, and drive-thrus are a very small percentage of that,” Reynolds says. “Restricting drive-thrus just results in emissions moving from the drive-thru to the parking lot.”

Reynolds says the CRFA has been monitoring attempts to restrict drive-thrus in Canada. She says the association’s members are willing to work with planning committees to design drive-thrus appropriately and are always working to increase speed of service to reduce wait times.

“There’s no scientific evidence to say that restricting these businesses is justified,” she says, adding that no municipalities in Canada have, as yet, imposed a moratorium on new drive-thrus.

But a moratorium is in place in at least one city in the U.S. San Luis Obispo, a city of about 45,000 people on California’s central coast, has banned construction of new drive-thrus since the early 1980s. While a few of the lanes in place before the ordinance have been allowed to remain, no new drive-thrus have come to town in more than two decades.

Doug Davidson, deputy director of the San Luis Obispo community development department, doesn’t recall the exact impetus for the passing of the ordinance but says it has a lot of upsides—lessening noise pollution, easing traffic, and possibly reducing air pollution among them. Moreover, the citizenry seems to embrace it, for the most part. He says there have been a few attempts over the years, mostly by local restaurants, to repeal the ordinance, but nothing has garnered enough momentum to have it overturned.

“There hasn’t been a lot of opposition to it,” Davidson says. “We’re kind of used to it, and some people are proud of it.”

Not everyone, though, is so fond of the ordinance. Keith Handley, owner of seven McDonald’s restaurants in San Luis Obispo County (two without drive-thrus in the city of San Luis Obispo itself), is one opponent. He says it creates difficulty for the elderly, families with small children, and others who have a hard time getting in and out of a car.

“It’s a terrible inconvenience,” he says.