Marcel Moran, San Jose State University Planning, Policy, and Environmental Studies Assistant Professor, presented Drive-Thru USA - Spatial Analysis, Car-Centricity, and Sprawl Design in America at the Institute of Transportation Studies Transportation Seminar on Friday, April 3, 2026.
Abstract: Drive-thru businesses, in which customers place and retrieve orders without ever leaving their cars, discourage social interaction and physical exercise, and degrade a street’s walkability and air quality. Despite these negative attributes, their proliferation across the United States has never been quantified or spatially analyzed. This study pursues this topic by mapping drive-thrus throughout every county nationwide, combining data programmatically extracted from OpenStreetMap, satellite imagery, as well as company records. Though drive-thrus are historically associated with highway interchanges and rural areas, we find a large percentage of drive-thrus are located in suburban and urban areas. Further, a street-network analysis indicates that many drive-thrus intersect with local streets, highlighting the dangers these businesses pose to pedestrian safety. This national database - the first of its kind - can guide the co-locating of traffic-calming and pedestrian-safety infrastructure, and inform local governments as they consider restricting or banning drive-thrus from their jurisdictions.
Bio: Marcel Moran studies urban transportation via a variety of methods, including satellite imagery, mining open datasets and in-person field collection. His published work has led to policy changes in both San Francisco and New York City, and his research has been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Forbes and Bloomberg CityLab. He received his PhD from the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley in May 2023. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a masters degree from the University of Chicago.