Cresskill, New Jersey, Considers Drive-Thru Ban

Residents of one New Jersey town may soon have to get out of their cars to pick up a triple mocha cappuccino blast or Egg McMuffin.

That's because residents of Cresskill, New Jersey, are complaining about drive-thrus causing traffic congestion, NorthJersey.com reports.

"We might wait 10 minutes to get into our parking lots, resident Gail Rothbard told CBS 2 .

A proposed answer? Banning the construction of any more of them. And if Cresskill does ban the drive-thrus, it wouldn't be the first town to do so. City officials in Baldwin Park, California -- the birthplace of the drive-thru craze and the hometown of famed burger chain In-N-Out -- have already banned all future drive-thrus, USA Today reports .

But some Cresskill residents oppose the ban, noting that drive-thrus are just a part of modern day life. "It's just one of those things that people really need because of our pace of our times now," Cresskill resident Gus Patty told CBS . "We need to keep going, keep moving!"

While many may share Patty's opinion, organizations like the Sierra Club argue that drive-thrus aren't a good thing for consumers' wallets or the environment:

Taking the fast-food industry as an example, and taking into account that the average McDonald's drive-through wait is 159 seconds, we can calculate that the company's consumers burn some 7.25 million gallons of gas each year. The figure for the entire U.S. fast-food industry? Roughly 50 million gallons.

Check out the cities with the most traffic congestion below: