Steven Greenhut is the director of the Pacific Research Institute’s Free Cities Center and Western region director for the R Street Institute.
California, renowned for its car culture, is known as the “birthplace for some of the world’s most iconic” drive-through restaurants, according to the Visit California tourism organization. Jack in the Box’s original creepy clown mascot is on display at the esteemed San Diego History Center, and the first-ever McDonald’s has even been turned into a museum in San Bernardino.
But a new location of the state’s most beloved drive-through restaurant chain, In-N-Out Burger, is being blocked by activist neighbors and misguided local rules. The company proposed a large new restaurant at a major thoroughfare in Culver City in February, prompting the Los Angeles-adjacent municipality’s council to adopt a 45-day moratorium on new drive-throughs in June and then vote 4-0 in July to extend the ban for more than 10 months.
The council was spurred to action by Californians who, according to the Los Angeles Times, “expressed concerns about pollution, the traffic congestion, the dangers of errant drivers around kids and the lingering aroma of frying food.” Residents gathered signatures for a petition and turned out in droves to complain at City Council meetings. The next step would be a permanent local ordinance that bans new drive-through permits. Officials say that banning new drive-throughs is consistent with the goals of a Culver City planning document that went into effect in 2024, which calls for the city to take steps toward broad environmental goals like reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving air quality and shifting toward pedestrian-oriented development.
The struggle over Culver City’s proposed In-N-Out might be absurd, but it is not unique. Projects of all kinds are stopped short by the Golden State’s suffocating regulations, time-consuming reviews and ideological opposition. California’s grandest achievements — like the Golden Gate Bridge and the State Water Project — would have been stymied by today’s maze of red tape.
Even minor projects must plow through obstacles such as the California Environmental Quality Act, which requires reams of environmental-impact reports and can easily create legal headaches for any development requiring discretionary approval. Companies must also navigate a local-government approval gantlet that mirrors a Rube Goldberg contraption.
California’s regulatory environment isn’t unique, but its ideological peculiarities, growth-stifling laws and citizen-initiative process give activists more ammunition than elsewhere. In Culver City, locals who want less traffic in their neighborhoods are aligning with residents who want to reduce car usage for environmental reasons.
The language used by Culver City’s Mobility Subcommittee is emblematic of the hodgepodge nature of the anti-drive-through coalition. Per a staff report, the subcommittee complained that drive-throughs “are a product of car-centric design which has sweeping impacts on public health and safety because of car-idling and smog creation, dangerous zones for pedestrians (particularly children), and increased obesity rates.”
In a sensibly governed state, city governments would consider proposed business-expansion plans based on whether they conformed to zoning laws and complied with traffic studies, not issues of car-centeredness. But, as the Los Angeles Times noted, in California, “green modes of transportation, denser development and prioritizing bike lanes and foot traffic are increasingly in vogue.”
Ironically, the state has passed a variety of “green” laws in recent years that require localities to permit more high-density housing that promotes walkability. Lawmakers are waking up to the reality that city councils exert too much discretionary approval power. A council that rejects a drive-through disliked by some residents because it encourages car culture can also reject “walkable” condos because a different set of neighbors complain.
Councils now commonly bemoan car-centric design, but in the past they actually promoted it. In the 1940s, California created redevelopment agencies that floated debt and utilized eminent domain to promote urban renewal. Councils later learned they could use that authority to generate sales-tax revenue by subsidizing big-box stores, auto malls and suburban shopping centers — until Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown mercifully killed the redevelopment scheme during the 2011 budget crisis.
Now the pendulum has swung the other way. Several other California cities have also imposed drive-through restrictions, and more are mulling them. Never mind that drive-throughs are appreciated by time-strapped customers, and that successful businesses are an important source of tax revenue. Car-centric culture may have pluses and minuses, but it’s not the job of city councils to impose their views about childhood obesity rates and suburbanization on local businesses.
A state that was once known for its iconic businesses is now known for overreaching governments that restrict growth for whatever reason is in vogue at the time. If a company as beloved as In-N-Out has met its match when opening a simple drive-through restaurant, that doesn’t bode well for other businesses trying to succeed in California.
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