CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: Westmere’s Proposed Drive-Through Ban Debate

Westmere, a fast-growing city of about 70,000, already has 23 drive-throughs, and four further applications sit on the planning department’s desk. Should Councillor Naomi Laflamme prevail, those four may be the last ever approved: she proposes amending the zoning bylaw to forbid new drive-throughs citywide, while allowing existing ones to remain.

Laflamme accuses the municipality of undermining its own objectives, professing a commitment to walkable neighbourhoods and reduced emissions while approving “another lot designed around a line of idling cars.” Particularly galling are lineups that overflow parking lots during the morning rush, obstructing bus stops and bike lanes. “The immediate effect would be slight,” she admits, “but each new outlet locks in thirty more years of car-first design.”

Craig Dempsey, owner of two coffee franchises with drive-throughs, charges that the proposal overlooks the actual clientele. “Roughly seventy percent of my sales pass through the window, many to parents with sleeping children, people with mobility difficulties and tradespeople on short breaks,” he says. The queue at his Pembina Street location, he does not deny, regularly backs onto the road, and a second ordering lane there could be built at his expense. “Punishing businesses that haven’t opened yet remedies nothing,” he insists.

Femi Adeyemi, a transportation engineer who has reviewed traffic studies across the Prairies, is unimpressed by the idling argument: “Set against the distances Westmere’s vehicles travel daily, a lot’s worth of waiting engines scarcely registers.” The defect he identifies is design, many older sites having been built to accommodate only six or seven cars. He recommends mandatory capacity for twelve, with entrances set well back from busy intersections, while allowing that a drive-through makes little sense beside a rapid-transit station.

For Shirley Vandermeer, the debate is personal. Her backyard faces a twenty-four-hour burger outlet whose headlights and ordering speaker keep her awake past midnight, and two complaints earned only the reply that the volume satisfies municipal rules. She has publicly applauded Laflamme’s initiative, but continues pressing separately for overnight restrictions on outlets adjoining homes. A hearing follows early next year.

Driving along Pembina Street every morning, I know precisely what the councillor means: lineups 6. Choose…growing with every outletspilling onto the roadfouling the morning airstarving nearby shops. Sitting in that line is nobody’s idea of a good start to the day. My own coffee stop, I admit, has a window. But a blanket prohibition strikes me as excessive.

To his credit, the franchise owner 7. Choose…calls the exhaust trivialdefends window service for busy parentshas backed a twelve-car minimumadmits one site’s flaw, which is more than most proprietors would volunteer. The engineer’s prescription of 8. Choose…more room for waiting carsfewer outlets near transit stationsa second lane at each sitecapped overnight hours addresses the cause instead of the symptom.

I sympathize with the neighbour whose backyard is lit all night, but her torment stems from 9. Choose…an outlet awaiting approvala volume above municipal limitsa restaurant already opena lineup on her street. Her overnight proposal deserves a separate discussion. Council should 10. Choose…hear from all four applicantsexempt coffee outletsapprove the four pending applicationstry stricter design first at the hearing, holding the ban in reserve should that fail.