Chick-Fil-A A Public Nuisance? This City Seems To Think So

Business is good at Chick-fil-A, so good that one city is looking to deem it a “public nuisance” due to long lines that are causing traffic congestion.

Santa Barbara, California, residents are fed up with the chicken chain’s long drive-thru lines blocking traffic in the city for hours, and city officials are looking to declare the restaurant a “public nuisance” for the snarl it is creating in the streets, CBS News reported.

The Chick-fil-A restaurant in question has been in Santa Barbara since 2013 and continues to draw a steady crowd of customers through its drive-thru, which blocks nearby driveways and sidewalks, causing city buses and emergency vehicles to look for other routes to get by, city officials have said, CBS News reported.

A city traffic report goes on to detail the alleged problems that the Chick-fil-A restaurant is causing, such as increasing the odds of traffic collisions and pedestrian injuries.

The report said the restaurant is causing a “chronic adverse traffic impact” by blocking the city’s State Street, sidewalks, disabled parking spots, and bike lanes.

The report also goes on to say that during peak drive-thru times, one lane of traffic can be blocked for as long as 90 minutes on a weekday and 155 minutes on Saturdays.

Kristen Sneddon, a member of Santa Barbara's city council, said during a council meeting in early March, according to the Santa Barbara News-Press, that Chick-fil-A may have outgrown the current location.

“Chick-fil-A has a good problem here. They are so successful, they have outgrown their site. It’s possible they were oversized for that site to begin with."

Based on the traffic issues, the Santa Barbara council has unanimously approved to hold a public hearing on June 7 about designating Chick-fil-A public nuisance as the restaurant requested additional time to fix the issue.

In response to the congestion problem, franchise owner Travis Collins told CBS MoneyWatch that he wants to “be a good neighbor” and is making efforts to ease the situation by hiring additional workers and third-party traffic control.

Chick-fil-A also plans to rearrange parking spaces and add a forced right turn exit out of the restaurant, the Santa Barbara News-Press said.

Prior to becoming a Chick-fil-A, the location was a Burger King with a drive-thru, which was approved for operation in 1978. Residents said the burger chain did not have the same traffic issues.

This is not the first Chick-fil-A location to come under fire for long drive-thru lines. A report from Business Insider found complaints from at least 20 different states related to Chick-fil-A’s long drive-thru lines causing traffic congestion and requiring a police presence.