My Testimony to the Planning Commission on the new St. Paul Drive-Thru Study

[The lovely patio at the Snelling/Marshall Starbucks that has always been this way and was never a literal hellscape or anything.]

Last Friday, I had the privilege of being the only member of the public to testify on the city's new drive-thru study that wasn't representing the fast food industry or the Chamber of Commerce. Here's my brief testimony, which you can also see here:

Thank you Madam Chair and members of the Commission. I served here for 9 years, and one thing I remember talking about was the Snelling and Marshall Starbucks, which is where I wrote these notes, on their new patio. 

I have three things to think about. First, there’s a new book about people with disabilities — I’m reluctant to speak for people with disabilities personally — but there’s a new book called "When Driving is Not an Option" that covers the importance of these topics, and mentions the high percentage of people with disabilities who don’t drive cars. It’s important when designing these polices that we don’t trade off access for one group at the expense of access for another.

My second point is about ice removal on sidewalks, another key issue for safety and mobility. Drive-thru curb cuts, once cars start driving over the sidewalk, the snow and ice get compacted and it's impossible to get the ice off the sidewalk. It becomes the slipperiest part of someone’s trek down the sidewalks of St. Paul. 

The third thing is economic development in St. Paul. This has come up a lot lately in my life, where people have asked me, including Dir. Goodman in PED, how do we help small businesses in St Paul? What do we have that they don’t have in the suburbs? 

We have connections between businesses. We have sidewalks, and you can trip chain. You go to the bakery, then you go to the bookstore, then you go to the coffee shop. You walk between all these places. The second you put a drive-thru in, that business becomes an island. People don’t even get out of their cars. They don’t walk. 

That makes it harder to connect between one place an another. If you want to grow places like Snelling, Grand, the East Side, all the commercial strips in St. Paul, you need to focus on making connections between business, not just building drive-thrus run by corporate chains from around the world, to be little islands where people never see what’s so great about St. Paul and our small business economy. 

They did this in Minneapolis, a blanket ban on drive-thrus to support small businesses, equity, safety, walkability, climate action. we can do that in St. Paul too.   

Axios has a story on it today covering the study that generously quotes me. Let's hope that Planning Commissioners and city leaders push staff to be more aggressive with these regulations.