Drive-thru restaurants are convenient, but excessive use of them has resulted in a negative effect on air quality. Long Beach leadership should take the initiative and lead in the fight to improve air quality by limiting the number of drive-thru restaurants.
Long Beach is the armpit of California when it comes to air quality.
The American College of Sports Medicine ranks the city of Long Beach as the worst city in air quality out of one hundred of the largest cities in the country.
According to the U.S Department of Energy, Drive-through windows are an opportunity to reduce idling.
Idling for more than 10 seconds uses more fuel and creates more CO2 than turning off and restarting your engine.
Eliminating the unnecessary idling of personal vehicles would be the same as taking 5 million vehicles off the roads.
How can anyone fathom the absurdity of restricting drive-throughs? How dare they take away the American way of convenience?
If anyone has ever had the opportunity to drive north to the city of San Luis Obispo, you cannot help but notice there are no drive-throughs.
The reasoning behind why the city of San Luis Obispo succeeded is simply because city officials recognized the importance of health since the 1980’s from respiratory issues, obesity, and the importance of cleaner air. Long Beach officials should do the same.
I believe that if we start with limiting drive-thrus, it can trigger a domino effect for other cities to follow suit, as well as putting the beautiful city of Long Beach off of the top list of polluted cities.
The challenge of restricting drive-throughs is extremely difficult but can be accomplished.
For example, we can start implementing this as a voluntary basis and/or as a pilot program for at least two years.
After that, we could suggest a proposal that any business implementing this program would be granted a tax write off.
Another option would be to allow for customers who decide to order from inside would get a 10% discount (and some exercise for free). Additionally, only customers with electric cars would be authorized through drive-throughs.
Restricting drive-thru alone will not completely fix our air quality crisis, but can serve as the steppingstone for a much cleaner city.
It is unfortunate that Long Beach is number one as the most polluted city in the country. This does not mean we cannot start off somewhere triggering a positive foundation for the future.