things you already knew about toilets and smoking
Two years later, the city realizes that the high-tech public toilets have backfired:
local businesses say the toilets have only made things worse. Not only have they become a haven for drug dealers and prostitutes, but the streets are filled with more urine and feces than before [p-i]
Quick quiz, what is the most surprising part about this story: (1) nobody at the city-level seemed to foresee this problem, (2) it would cost nearly a million dollars to shut down the space toilet contract early, (3) public urination and defecation are more common now than before the alien automated bathrooms landed, (4) no one you know has ever dared to use one of these contraptions?
While we’re on the topic of obvious news, a study found that indoor air quality has improved in bars now that no one’s allowed to smoke inside [p-i]
I think #3 is the most surprising.
Although the public coin-operated toilets in Paris seem to work fine. What is it about Seattle that makes these a failure?
Maybe it’s because Seattle’s are free? I’m not sure that couple quarters would be too high a barrier to someone looking to use the space for illicit purposes. Where are the toilet economists when you need them most?
Honestly, I think the biggest problem with public toilets in Seattle is that there simply aren’t any. Today I was in a part of Los Angeles that attracts a lot of tourists AND is home base for a large amount of homeless people. There are lots of public bathrooms in this area (near Olvera Street, if you want to be precise) and while they’re not all sparkly-shiny clean, none of them are disgusting.
All along the beach in Venice (where I’m staying) and neighboring Santa Monica there are tons and tons of homeless people, tons of obvious burnouts, tons of tourists and just tons of people in general and again there are lots and lots of bathrooms, all of which are at least “not scary”.
More bathrooms gives more options; less bathrooms just concentrates all the ick.
I am seriously bummed about this. Jokes aside, Seattle simply does not have enough public bathroom facilities. I don’t know how much a self-cleaning public toilet should cost, but I do know that it is an investment that benefits everyone: tourists, shoppers, bar-hoppers, homeless people without other options, and, yes, bus chicks. Having fewer bathrooms (or closing the ones we’ve already invested in) doesn’t seem to be the appropriate solution.
I’ve used the public toilets (admittedly some time ago), and they were far cleaner than that awful Honey Bucket that used to be next to Steinbruck Park.
On Paris: I’ve used those toilets as well. Running to find change when you have to go seems a bit much to ask. I prefer the free kind.
If it makes ya’ll feel any better, these are the same toilets that sprung up in San Francisco and they were plagued by exactly the same problems. It’s not a ‘Seattle problem’, per se. If you put something that’s free in an area plagued by drug use and tolerated homelessness, then you should have expected that people would not only abuse the privilege, they’d also not care in what sort of condition they left it. At least if you charged fifty cents or a dollar to use it, you’d lessen the impact of the tolerated homeless on them. It might not deter the drug users and the whores, but at least there’d be less of chance of becoming a petri dish for the next Ebola virus.