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Drive by a Dutch Bros around the area on a Saturday morning.
It is the norm to see a dozen plus cars in each of the two order lines patiently waiting for a specialty coffee or specialty drinks loaded with caffeine and enough sugar to cause Claus Spreckels to spin in his grave.
You will not see such a scene in Sebastopol.
The Sonoma County municipality outlawed drive-up windows in 2015, seven years before Dutch Bros opened its first California location in Ridgecrest.
Carlsbad, which banned new drive-up windows in 1997, earlier this year voted to reverse the 28-year prohibition.
Los Angeles still has a drive-up ban in place for new drive-up windows.
The reason behind the LA partial ban was obesity. Elected leaders believed if they did so in a specific 32 square mile south of Interstate 10 it would help turnaround statics that shows the region covered has the highest obesity rate along with more health issues than any other ZIP code in LA County.
Experts and data heavily suggest the partial ban isn’t working.
Carlsbad’s ban was out of concern about traffic and quality of life.
It came after Legoland opened. The huge tourist attraction helped create the Chick-fil-A effect.
What’s the Chick-fil-A effect? Recall the first two years Chick-fil-A was open in Manteca and turned several blocks of Yosemite Avenue into an extension of their drive-up que.
The primary impetus behind Sebastopol banning drive-up windows was to reduce vehicle emissions.
Given the San Joaquin Valley is the nation’s worst — or second worst depending upon the criteria — air basin when it comes to air quality issues, you’d think it would be a no brainer to ban drive thru windows for all new retail construction.
The City of Davis — the Berkeley of the Central Valley a few years back — proposed exactly that. You’d have thought they were telling residents they were banning all liberals from residing in the city.
The just-out-of-puberty politically correct crowd might slam climate change doubters while alluding to research that isn’t exactly ironclad but threaten to take their ability to make a run for Taco Bell or to have a Big Mac Attack at Mickey D’s without leaving their car because of all-documented data and you’re committing heresy.
That’s the funny thing with most people in the climate control debate. It’s always do as I say, and not as I do.
Leonardo DiCaprio loves to lecture people about their carbon footprint but most of us are like dwarf Munchkins compared to his King Kong on steroids footprint with his jet setting lifestyle.
When it comes to air quality/climate control most of us — including the save the earth zealots — tend to do the talk but not the walk.
Manteca’s leaders on Tuesday declined a suggestion championed by former city planning commissioner Leonard Smith to take steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by restricting their use to electric vehicles, zero emission vehicles, and hybrid vehicles.
Instead of dismissing the suggestion as political suicide, which judging by the Duch Bros lines it would be, several elected leaders and staff conceded the day is coming statewide for not an outright ban on new drive-up windows, but for restrictions similar to that advanced by Smith.
In modern cars, exhaustive studies show that after 10 seconds of idling you are starting to create more pollution than restarting a car. That same research shows that idling is harder on your engine than when the car is moving.
City general plans — the state-required document that serves as a blueprint for growth — references broad policy statements that growth should take into account air quality issues.
That means putting solutions in place that aren’t simply a refinement of development patterns rooted in the post-World War II boom.
Traffic roundabouts that have been known to irk some drivers simply because they exist, are a prime example of a development tweak that makes sense on at least four levels.
*They allow traffic to keep flowing through busy intersections with minimum stopping and no prolong sitting.
*They make it safer for pedestrians to cross as it slows down traffic.
*They are typically cheaper to install than traffic signals and have much lower ongoing maintenance costs.
*They reduce traffic idling that in turns reduces pollution.
Cities need to opt for roundabouts where ever it is feasible to eliminate traffic signals or busy four-way stops.
Manteca and other jurisdictions also have started requiring roundabouts in new development near parks and schools to improve pedestrian safety while also slowing down traffic.
It would seem the next logical step would be to ban new drive thru windows from being created or — at the very least — an aggressive educational program complete with signs at existing and new drive thru windows advising people of the impact on greenhouse gas emissions
It isn’t a small issue given studies show that 43 percent of fast food in this country is purchased via drive-up windows.
Again, modern vehicles use less fuel and pollute less when they are restarted to the point idling a vehicle more than 10 seconds means they are using more gas and polluting more while going nowhere.  
San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District staff over the years has pointed out that if we took every car and truck off the road and stopped using farm and construction equipment and banned trains within the eight counties we still wouldn’t be able to meet some federal and state air quality standards.
It’s true that our air is more than 50 percent cleaner in the San Joaquin Valley as opposed to 33 years ago despite the population increasing by about half.
We need to pick the low hanging fruit that still remains. Among that fruit is discouraging pointless idling, employing roundabouts, and phasing out two-stroke engines for yard tools.
The Diamond Bar Air District in Southern California has research that weighed in on two-stroke gas-powered yard tools such as leaf blowers as being among the top three sources for specific air pollution in the Los Angeles Basin.
If we can make further inroads on air quality by passive designs such as roundabouts, educating people about idling, and replacing gas-powered yard tools with electric versions then that’s what we should be doing.
None of the three is un-doable nor do they require a massive change in our lives.

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