[HN Gopher] Public toilets are vanishing and that's a civic cata...
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Public toilets are vanishing and that's a civic catastrophe
Author : pseudolus
Score : 181 points
Date : 2024-07-20 11:37 UTC (11 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (psyche.co)
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, this is what Apple should invent next.
|
| With my iPhone I can do almost anything while traveling: look up
| maps, pay, take pictures, browse the web. But what I _can't_ do
| with my iPhone is the most basic thing ...
| wjnc wrote:
| You are punning, but if a big tech would create a map of
| publicly available toilets that would be great for many
| demographics (any man 65+, those with bowel syndroms). It's the
| little things that make life easier (or more affordable) that
| matter the most (in my opinion).
|
| I know there is a debate in the group that needs "fast toilets"
| whether they should be free. Well that debate is moot when
| there are near zero options. A coffee brings what EUR1 of
| margin? A toilet could cost EUR1, and still help those in need.
| I hate paying for dirty toilets (German and Belgian gas stops
| grmbl, learn from France). But a clean toilet can be a
| lifesaver.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Apple Maps does have pretty good restroom information - there
| just aren't many.
| amelius wrote:
| Half a solution isn't a solution at all ...
|
| If Apple cared about users they would work on problems that
| really mattered instead of giving us a 100MP camera where
| 50MP is already just fine.
| schrodinger wrote:
| You want Apple to... start building a public toilet
| infrastructure? and judging them for not as not caring
| about their users? Seems a bit extreme of a stance!
| Schiendelman wrote:
| It's super weird for you to come up with that "example" -
| Apple's one of the few companies that lag on megapixels
| and work on improving quality instead of numbers.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Organic Maps does that.
| jraph wrote:
| > if a big tech would create a map of publicly available
| toilets
|
| You don't need big tech for this: OpenStreetMap [1], a map
| (actually, a database) that works like Wikipedia, is there
| for all of us :-)
|
| It has information about public restrooms, whether they are
| accessible, gratis, and toilets are only a very small part of
| OSM.
|
| The more people contribute, the more awesome it becomes.
|
| A sibling mentioned Organic Maps, it's one of the many apps
| out there to conveniently use OSM (and contribute).
|
| [1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Open Street Maps, which Google and Apple happily take
| information from, seem to have all public toilets indexed.
| Unfortunately, the map is still almost empty when you try to
| look for them.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| There is a "Where is Public Toilet" app. Google maps work
| too.
| lodovic wrote:
| now that got me thinking of a startup to build public restrooms
| that monitor the visitor with AI.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Someone let me off this planet. I don't want to live here any
| more.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| Should be able to suck it out into a biodegrageable bag, no
| wiping required
| padolsey wrote:
| > 'feeling unsafe or exposed in a public toilet'
|
| This just makes me think of America and the bizarrely huge gaps
| between the hinges and gaps at the bottom and top of the
| cubicles, even in very wealthy contexts, like at big tech
| companies. WHY? Such a strange example of embedded inertias of
| design in ostensibly innovative contexts.
| rolisz wrote:
| I think that's because of safety regulations, so that firemen
| can quickly check if there's anyone in stalls.
|
| Yes, it sounds stupid as an European, where somehow we survive
| without this.
| brudgers wrote:
| I used to practice architecture. In general (1) there are not
| regulations/laws/codes requiring the practice. The gaps at
| the floor are to facilitate mopping and reduce the damage
| from overflow floods.
|
| For first responder access, I have seen a hospital
| requirement for outswinging doors for one-holers with privacy
| locks. This allows the door to be opened when a person is
| collapsed against the door.
|
| (1) "In general" because there are almost certainly niche
| regulations that require it. For example the construction
| standards of a state prison bureau, local board of education,
| etc.
| Zealotux wrote:
| It's simple: they don't want you to slack in the toilets,
| sitting there scrolling Twitter, in other words they don't want
| you to poop on your paid work time. The feeling of being unsafe
| or exposed is the point.
| Y_Y wrote:
| It is far more important to prevent (through shame and
| surveillance) any unamerican toilet activities than it is to
| allow peaceful bowel movements. In the old world there there
| are floor-to-ceiling cubicle doors and toilet bowls that could
| barely drown a toddler. I need not explain how this is the
| first irreversible step towards authoritatian socialist
| anarchy.
| llm_trw wrote:
| To keep you from staying there for too long and lowering
| productivity.
|
| This was invented after having a foreman check that you pissed
| or shat in the toilet like they did on a ford assembly line was
| deemed to expensive.
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| There's no nefarious reason. It's because they are
| prefabricated kits that need to be installed precisely to be
| gap-free. The installers obviously don't want to or can't
| install them with the correct tolerances.
| FredPret wrote:
| Public restrooms are the first public good to bite the dust when
| petty crime picks up.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Cleaning bodily fluids and repairing bathrooms is not cheap.
|
| That is why the government doesn't provide them. If the
| government can't be bothered to pick up that burden, no one
| else should be expected to.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| And then people complain about shit on the sidewalk. Not
| providing a toilet doesn't mean that people are going to stop
| needing one.
| FredPret wrote:
| This is why a little bit of money spent on public order
| yields 10x - 100x ROI at least.
|
| Safer streets, longer lives, a fair environment for the
| physically weak, longer-lasting infrastructure, a better
| business environment, and - more crucially than all of the
| above - more trust.
| debo_ wrote:
| *when potty crime picks up /joke
| jtdev wrote:
| Another symptom of the decline of our formerly high-trust
| society.
|
| You can't have public bathrooms in a society filled with
| criminals and homeless drug addicts.
| greenavocado wrote:
| What are the factors that led to the explosion in criminality
| and homelessness and their drug addiction?
| ta988 wrote:
| In some cities? people that have the means to spend $10 to go
| pee.
| rangestransform wrote:
| Being allergic to enforcing the law post blm
| scoofy wrote:
| Probably the proliferation of opiates and, more likely,
| methamphetamine. Scientific progress that makes these highly
| addictive and debilitating substances easy to produce can't
| be undone.
|
| I live in San Francisco, where it now costs over $100,000 per
| year to operate a single toilet, because without it being
| under constant guard, people start living in them.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Um, yes, kinda. Though in my experience (US/Michigan), "not
| public" toilets are very often accessible _if_ one has a good
| subset of the following traits: Very polite, locally-majority-
| race, clean, appropriately dressed, discrete, elderly, frail,
| female, alone, heavily pregnant, with an infant or small child,
| familiar to the employees, not in an urban area.
|
| Old geezer perspective: The withering availability of public
| toilets is just another symptom of the massive decline in social
| trust over the past half-century or so. I might suggest that the
| author talk to people on the "supply side" - especially long-time
| small business owners - about the expenses and miseries of being
| on their end of the stick...but the author seems so focused on
| the rights & well-being of the "user" population that I can't
| imagine him actually caring about "their sort".
| tiahura wrote:
| Maybe we should have believed them when they called themselves
| the counterculture?
| ghaff wrote:
| Pretty much. In the US, outside of major tourist areas, my
| sense is that explicitly public toilets have always been pretty
| scarce but, if you blend in, you can pretty much always find
| one at a hotel or a shopping center. No, you won't find them in
| a more residential area but that's always been the case.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Years ago, when I worked at a hotel, we had to lock down the
| bathrooms because a specific taxi driver would come and
| absolutely ruin them. The housekeepers threatened to quit
| simply because of this 1 person, and we had no reasonably
| cheap way to stop him, other than removing access to the
| bathrooms for the public.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Tell him he's banned from the establishment, and report him
| to the police for trespassing if he returns? Seems like you
| took the nuclear option right out of the gates.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That assumes police would respond quickly enough in this
| locale (they wouldn't, you have to say someone is in
| danger for them to come quick), and that the taxi driver
| would care, since they might be betting (correctly) at
| worst, the police would ask them to leave the premises.
|
| He was told not to come into the hotel anymore, but he
| did anyway. Any other solution would have taken too long
| to implement compared to just changing the locks on the
| doors and making the housekeepers happy, who you kind of
| need to operate the business.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| And then depending on the person's race, he sues you for
| racial discrimination. Or he resists the police when they
| try to remove him from your premise.
|
| You have then opened yourself up to a bunch of risks.
|
| Much less risky to shut down access for everyone.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I can guarantee you this won't work. The police won't
| arrive nearly fast enough and you don't have a lot of
| ways to stop him short of hiring a police officer as a
| guard because private security often aren't legally
| allowed touch people.
|
| Some people won't be deterred by anything short of
| someone who is able to intimidate or harm them. It's a
| no-win situation because allowing employees to hit people
| with clubs isn't a good idea. :(
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| It's not a business of a private business to provide public
| toilets. Local government must do it, just as they do roads,
| parks, buses, waste management etc.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I don't know how serious this article is. This is because even in
| Europe there's a huge disparity between countries and I don't
| think it can be generalised.
|
| In London, it's socially acceptable to use the toilet of any
| venue like a pub. In Paris they have high tech public toilets
| that automatically clean themselves, in Turkey mosques usually
| operate public toilets for profit alongside with the facilities
| provided by the government, in Germany they have Sanifair which
| gives you voucher for your payment and you can use at any
| participating location to purchase stuff like coffee.
| jmkni wrote:
| Anecdotal, but I got an uber in London recently (quite near the
| center) and the driver was complaining the whole trip about the
| fact that he needed to take a piss, and that there was a severe
| lack of public toilets.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I see how this can be a problem. It's probably not O.K. to
| offload the Taxi industry toilet costs to 3rd party
| businesses.
| nytesky wrote:
| So before Uber did taxis return to dispatch center for such
| things? With their own version of Danny DeVito?
| mrtksn wrote:
| I have no idea, probably it varies by location. If no
| paid public toilets are available and dispatch centres
| with toilets are not a thing they can always strike a
| deal with local businesses I guess.
|
| Also, they need to eat and the places they eat are
| probably also the places they use the WC.
| bell-cot wrote:
| A _decent_ and competent version of Uber would be meeting
| such needs.
|
| As things are - other companies can make national headlines
| by caring about human needs of drivers:
|
| https://www.today.com/food/news/chick-fil-a-break-room-
| rcna7...
| grahar64 wrote:
| In London places won't let you use their bathrooms unless you
| buy something. The UK was by far the worst place I have visited
| for lack of public toilets. They also don't have many/any
| public fountains, which is insane around kids playgrounds that
| have no public facilities within walking distance.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I guess that's true in touristy places but in general there's
| nothing stopping anybody from using the WC, just walk in.
| Would be nice to buy something but asking politely will do
| too, I've never been turned down.
|
| In Turkey they really like putting formal structure to that
| kind of stuff and venues at the high street sometimes have a
| lock with a password which is printed on the receipt with
| your purchase. One particular McDonald's was a pioneer in
| this, as their location was at the most crowded and central
| place where people used to meet before the proliferation of
| cellphones.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| It's not like they have keycards on the toilets (least not
| the vast, vast majority). You can just walk in the use them.
| Wetherspoons reliably have clean bathrooms and there are a
| lot of them.
| omnicognate wrote:
| They're not required to let you, but I just ask politely if I
| can use their loo and have never been refused. There has
| indeed been a steady decline in the number of public toilets,
| though.
| wirthjason wrote:
| Will they really not let you use the bathroom?
|
| The same idea exists in the US, and often bathrooms have a
| PIN code to enter or a special key only the shop owner has.
|
| I've never been turned down when asking politely. Most people
| are rather sympathetic when someone needs to use the bathroom
| for legitimate purposes.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| I'VE never been turned down. But I've seen others get
| turned down who don't look like me ;)
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| In the US it's because the homeless population in most
| cities is rising, and they have few places to use the
| toilet.
|
| Business owners perceive the presence of homeless people as
| bad for business so they don't want to encourage homeless
| people to stick around. And they think homeless people will
| trash their bathrooms or use drugs inside which is
| dangerous for other customers and brings police presence.
|
| So business owners lock up their bathrooms. Result: Even
| fewer places for homeless people to use the toilet.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Business owners perceive the presence of homeless
| people as bad for business so they don't want to
| encourage homeless people to stick around. And they think
| homeless people will trash their bathrooms or use drugs
| inside which is dangerous for other customers and brings
| police presence.
|
| These things aren't just perceptions or thoughts. It's a
| real problem that anyone who runs a business in a
| location with a homeless problem can attest to.
| wirthjason wrote:
| You're totally right. And it's important to distinguish
| between the many forms of homelessness. There's visible
| homeless, they are what most people think of. There are
| also invisible homeless, they don't "look" homeless.
| Often you don't know they are homeless except for
| carrying around some belongings and brushing their teeth
| in public places.
|
| Businesses care about the first type because of the
| associated problems and are completely fine with the
| later.
| switch007 wrote:
| Pubs are different, especially the bigger chains. They're
| generally too busy to police it. Big posh hotels can be good
| too - ask the lobby for the bar, then ask the bar staff for
| the toilet if it's not obvious.
|
| A 8-table local run cafe? I wouldn't dare ask
| zarzavat wrote:
| It depends greatly on the type of establishment. If it's a
| small family business, absolutely you have to buy something.
|
| If it's a chain then you probably don't have to buy anything.
|
| If it's a large establishment such as a supermarket then you
| don't have to buy anything, nobody is keeping track.
|
| And obviously toilets in public places like train stations
| are free for all nowadays.
| watwut wrote:
| That German voucher thing system sux. You cant just buy
| something cheap with voucher, there is minimum buy attached to
| it. So, you pay 1e for toilet and if you want to use the
| voucher, you have to pay 5e minimum - usually in overpriced
| shop you want nothing from.
|
| The end result is that woods next to stops smell horribly and
| you have to be super careful where to step. Because, too many
| people stop there to piss and shit.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Finland is the undisputed champion in this respect (as in many
| other quality of life respects), never had a problem to find a
| free nice public toilet there. Norway was the worst, not only
| the prices were outrageous, but only Norwegian issued card was
| accepted for payment. Netherlands has an inventive solution for
| males, but its smells not so nice.
| dachworker wrote:
| This is one of my biggest frustrations with living in Germany.
| And btw, so much for "walkable cities". Especially for the
| elderly who get the need more frequently, but even I ended up in
| situations where I am an hour away from home and needed to pee
| badly. Pretty much every mildly secluded corner in the city
| smells like piss as a result of this ... You know for a country
| who thinks of itself as more socially minded, and not as hardcore
| capitalist, they do nickle-dime you for everything.
|
| Public latrines are the most basic of public goods.
| crngefest wrote:
| It differs city by city, in some you have better facilities.
|
| IMO it's more about drugs and sex than capitalism but yea I
| agree the state of public toilet availability is a disgrace in
| Germany
| snowpid wrote:
| Berlin has a program building public toilets. Though not so
| many, it is a contradiction to the original post as the
| public toilets increase.
| crngefest wrote:
| It might have. But where I live in Berlin there is exactly
| one public toilet for the whole district. And it's a
| pissoir only so if you are female or need no.2 you are
| screwed.
|
| Might be different in another neighbourhood here.
| adityapatadia wrote:
| I faced when I visited New York. I had to search Google Maps and
| it showed a public toilet in Rockefeller Center. I walked a few
| miles to reach but it was a real pain.
| chhenning wrote:
| The public toilet in NYC is called Starbucks. It doesn't get
| easier than that.
| raverbashing wrote:
| And McD. And Shake Shack. And others.
|
| (Yes you might need to buy something but seems like a small
| effort for it)
| ckemere wrote:
| I can attest that Shake Shack have purchase-only bathrooms.
| And even after a purchase they seemed annoyed...
| ckemere wrote:
| Having just spent the year in Manhattan, my experience was
| that most (every?) Starbucks there no longer have public
| bathrooms even with purchase. I was surprised to discover
| that the only free public bathrooms were at Sweet Green. It
| changed my perspective of them as a company- it's a real
| commitment when the trend is going in the other direction and
| I want to support them financially as a result.
| adityapatadia wrote:
| Yes, I figured out the Starbucks (or any other fast food
| chain) thing after staying there for a while. It's however
| really a sad scene where people deny visiting washrooms
| especially when you need it the most.
|
| Plus it paints a wrong picture of a country because it's
| technically people asking you a few bucks for a basic
| necessity and the government has failed.
|
| This is in stark contrast with developed countries like
| Singapore (where I visit a lot). Singapore makes sure a
| public toilet is available within a few hundred meters and
| boy are those clean!
| ghaff wrote:
| Meanwhile you could probably have dropped into a Starbucks,
| bought something small, and used their bathroom. There have
| never been a lot of explicitly public bathrooms in cities like
| NYC.
| ekianjo wrote:
| something small costs 5 dollars in starbucks. thats some
| expensive pee
| koolba wrote:
| $5 coffee is cheaper than most pairs of pants.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Who is pissing their pants instead of just pissing
| outside someplace?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| One is just embarrasing, the other might get you on a sex
| offender registry.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| No one is pissing themselves over this. They just go
| somewhere discrete like behind a dumpster where there
| aren't any karens and piss. Even women do this if
| sufficiently desperate, the old squat and shake.
| creato wrote:
| You're also getting the thing you bought too. Maybe it's
| more expensive than you would have paid for it otherwise
| but that difference is the cost of the pee, not $5
| ethagnawl wrote:
| I just read this article about vanishing bathrooms at Starbucks
| and other fast food restaurants which are pivoting to mobile
| pickup and drive-thru locations.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/19/business/starbucks-mobile-ord...
|
| It doesn't look like the linked article mentions restaurant
| bathrooms but it can't be a coincidence. This all strikes me as a
| passive-aggressive reaction to FUD about homelessness and "out of
| control cities".
| lolinder wrote:
| It could be passive aggressive, or it could be that frontline
| employees at these places are seeing things that you're not and
| headquarters is making changes to protect their employees and
| their property.
|
| Not every instance of fear is FUD, sometimes the danger is
| real.
| c-linkage wrote:
| Change "protect employees and property" to "limit exposure to
| liability" and I'd agree.
| lolinder wrote:
| Take whatever monetary incentive you like, the point is
| that it's more likely that there are real risks that people
| who work in these places know about than that it's all FUD
| and OP's anecdotal sense that there is no real problem is
| reflective of the reality on the ground.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Presumably employees are more expensive than property here.
| Both paying them to take care off and loss incurred because
| they left to work somewhere else where the conditions are
| better.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > headquarters is making changes to protect their employees
| and their property.
|
| Or to simply retain employees.
|
| If you had your choice between two fast food jobs with
| similar pay but one of them requires employees to take
| rotations cleaning the public bathroom throughout the day,
| which one are you going to pick?
|
| The issues with drug users are also very real depending on
| the city and location. Having to have cops or emergency
| medical people show up to your location a couple times for no
| other reason than you offered public restrooms is a quick way
| to make a company decide to no longer offer them.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Or to simply retain employees.
|
| Protect employees in order to retain them, yeah. You're
| welcome to impute for-profit motive here, but either way I
| fully agree that I wouldn't want to be responsible for
| maintaining a public restroom in a city center.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > This all strikes me as a passive-aggressive reaction to FUD
| about homelessness and "out of control cities".
|
| No, it is just that very, very few people want to clean and
| repair bathrooms.
|
| I would rather work at a restaurant that has no public
| bathrooms, so that I never have to clean them. Hence I am
| willing to work for less compared to a place with public
| bathrooms, hence my employer has lower labor costs.
|
| Pretty sure that goes for all the keyboard warriors too. It's
| pretty well known that almost any job where you have to deal
| with the general public is worse than a job where you don't.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I worked as a McDonalds janitor when I was a teenager, and I
| specifically requested it instead of cooking hamburgers. It
| was actually pretty pleasant. You got to walk around, talk to
| customers, go outside (to empty the parking lot trash cans)
| and so on. Yes, the bathrooms were messy, but I cleaned them
| so often they didn't really have time to get totally
| disgusting.
|
| Of course nowadays, I bet it's not a dedicated job, and they
| make the single person working alone in the store do
| everything...
| Aurornis wrote:
| > This all strikes me as a passive-aggressive reaction to FUD
| about homelessness and "out of control cities".
|
| Anyone who has ever worked in retail or food service could tell
| you that nobody wants to have to deal with the public
| restrooms. They need to be cleaned frequently and it's not a
| fun job.
|
| It's not just homeless people or FUD. It's because the general
| public has enough outliers who cause problems that when 100
| people use your bathroom every day, you're guaranteed to get a
| couple who create some sort of mess.
| abbadadda wrote:
| Surely this is an erosion in public trust, but if you've ever
| been in a busy public toilet that smells horrendous, you know
| from experience that maintaining these public toilets is no easy
| feat. At the same time, I agree with the thrust of the article
| that they are a civic good & necessity.
|
| I live in the UK. I use the "Radar Key Scheme" for both my son
| and myself. The Radar Key opens handicapped toilets around the
| country that are otherwise locked. I asked my GP about a referral
| for this and they knew nothing about it. In the end I just bought
| one online. Bizarre. I have a disability that's not visible, I'm
| otherwise healthy and relatively privileged, but being unable to
| find a toilet to use when my bladder feels like it is going to
| explode makes me feel like a wild animal - unable to fulfill the
| most base need in a culturally acceptable way - terrible feeling.
| koolba wrote:
| > The Radar Key opens handicapped toilets around the country
| that are otherwise locked.
|
| I've never heard of this type of thing in the USA. Handicap
| stalls, if available, are just next to the rest of the stalls
| in any given location. They're usually a bit bigger to
| accommodate a wheel chair, but I don't think I've ever seen a
| special entry mechanism.
|
| Is the UK version a physical key or some RF tag?
| tialaramex wrote:
| It's just a physical key. Like the keys for operating train
| equipment or fire safety they're not intended to prevent
| malicious access, they're a social signal - this is for
| people who need it. You're not clever for figuring out how to
| abuse it, you're just a bad person.
| throwaway3306a wrote:
| The bad person is the one who decided to lock and downsize
| public toilets. All the arguments about taxes are about
| money for public good that market can't solve, well where
| is it?
| _kb wrote:
| It's a physical lock-and-key key:
| https://shop.disabilityrightsuk.org/products/radar-key.
|
| Living in a country where it's the norm, the concept of (any)
| locked bathrooms is wild. When travelling I always always
| find restricted access (either by key, or payment) public
| facilities extremely jarring.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| A lot of newer toilets in the USA are single occupancy rooms
| for families and disabled. Of course, this also makes them
| easier to use for drugs and camping, so locking them down in
| urban areas is pretty important.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| There needs to be more innovation in turd extraction
| Havoc wrote:
| I vote for in-situ teleportation.
| triyambakam wrote:
| I have a urinal bottle, collapsible toilet, and bottle bidet in
| my van. I never fear needing to urinate or defecate wherever I
| am.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| With your rig I'd fear it every time
| triyambakam wrote:
| I don't follow. Why would being prepared make you fear it?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| This isn't being prepared. This is sloshing around urine
| and feces in your vehicle and having to dispose of it
| yourself. Its a half step removed from the sanitary
| practices of the middle ages. Prepared in this case is
| going to the bathroom before you hit the road and making
| appropriate stops as needed from there.
| saulpw wrote:
| Does that van fit in your pocket or do you just never walk
| anywhere?
| triyambakam wrote:
| I live in a rural area so walking anywhere civic is not
| possible so I always drive.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Rent-a-Potties, paired with some kind of mobile app, make good
| business sense to me. Especially if you can get some kind of
| network effect / critical density mass going in a given area.
|
| A person is out and about town, and suddenly has to go, bad. They
| pull out the app and find their closest Rent-a-Potty. It appears
| on their map with a green dot - that means the last person to use
| it considered it reasonably clean, a good sign. (Everyone knows
| that people whose usage of the Rent-a-Potty is, ahem, strongly
| correlated with the state transition to an orange or red dot face
| price hikes, or possibly even expulsion from the app as a whole,
| so there's good reason to leave it at least as good as you found
| it.)
|
| They tap the dot, hit "Reserve", and the timer begins. A 4 digit
| PIN code appears on the screen, your secret incantation to the
| hall of the porcelain throne. These things are not cheap - $1 per
| minute for the first 10 minutes of reservation, $2 past that. But
| they're emptied every night, the sink always has hot water, and
| the soap is always refilled.
|
| Some people have tried to game the system by {your deviancy
| here}; the company has responded with {countermeasures you're
| smart enough to think of here}. Some enterprising souls could
| theoretically {countercountermeasure}, but honestly, implementing
| {countercountercountermeasure} isn't a huge concern for Rent-a-
| Potty's C-suite, compared to the recent competition from new
| market entrants like Loolurker, AirPnP, and Pouber.
| lobochrome wrote:
| We all pee and poop. Every. Single. Human.
|
| There is no place for "business".
|
| It's the literal definition of a public good and such the role
| of the government.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| We all eat too. Is there no place for "business" in eating?
| Should all restaurants be nationalized?
| citizenkeen wrote:
| No, but we try to guarantee that you have food.
| didgeoridoo wrote:
| There's a substantial difference between governments
| trying to provide a service (which they are generally
| terrible at) and paying for a service on behalf of those
| who cannot afford it (which they tend to be reasonably
| competent at).
|
| EBT is a pretty good program. Government grocery stores
| would almost certainly be an abomination (just ask your
| local public school cafeteria or military base mess
| hall).
|
| Edit: adgjlsfhk1 is correct that "generally terrible" is
| overstated and simplistic. Hopefully better take
| downthread.
| mistersquid wrote:
| > Government grocery stores would almost certainly be an
| abomination (just ask your local public school cafeteria
| or military base mess hall).
|
| Military bases run PXs and commissaries and these stores
| have reasonable (mid to high mid) quality goods.
| freedomben wrote:
| > Military bases run PXs and commissaries and these
| stores have reasonable (mid to high mid) quality goods.
|
| The PXs are pretty good but are priced comparably or
| higher than free-market stores off-base, and even still
| are subsidized by base funds. The Class Six is very well
| done and potentially profitable, though that's just a
| guess.
|
| The commissaries are much more expensive than off-base
| stores and likewise are subsidized by base funds. For the
| most part only the officer's and senior NCO's families
| can afford to shop at the Commissary.
|
| Disclaimer: I left active duty in the late 00s so things
| might have changed since then
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| the idea that the government is inherently bad at
| providing services is just very silly. roads, postal
| service, and national parks are all really great services
| that the government provides. the idea that the
| government only does things well by paying private
| companies to do them just doesn't have basis in reality.
| didgeoridoo wrote:
| I take back "generally terrible". How about "often spotty
| and rarely held accountable in practice"?
|
| It's not that governments literally cannot provide good
| services -- it's that when government appoints itself as
| a monopolist, outcomes and accountability become
| effectively disconnected, unless the service is so high-
| stakes and the quality is so abysmal that it rises to
| "vote the bastards out" territory.
| freedomben wrote:
| Agreed that the government isn't inherently bad at
| providing services, but I do think it's important to
| define how we measure "bad." For example, does "bad" mean
| the UX is bad? If so, then government isn't inherently
| bad at it (though can be, see next paragraph). If we
| define "bad" as "less economical (i.e. more
| expensive/wasteful of resources) then it does have a
| general tendency toward bad.
|
| It largely comes down to who is running the thing, and do
| they care? With private sector, they are forced to care
| because otherwise it will affect revenue and brand value,
| which will get the leader fired. The consumer is
| empowered with ability to spend their $ elsewhere, which
| rewards the better service and punishes the worse (note
| that this is becoming much less true in the age of giant
| corps, especially big tech). With government services,
| (particularly in monopolistic situations like the DMV),
| the consumer is largely powerless. They have no choice
| but to use the system given, and if they aren't happy
| they can complain but that complaint won't have any teeth
| (unless they happen to be politically connected of
| course).
|
| tldr: I most agree, but it depends on how you define
| "bad"
| brnt wrote:
| > (which they are generally terrible at)
|
| They are only as good as the people in a jurisdiction let
| them be. Also, the governments you have experienced are
| far from generally representative.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| Deleted
| didgeoridoo wrote:
| This rant is in such poor faith. Flagged.
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| Yes, completely agree here. But that's not mutually exclusive
| with the rent a potty idea. Public bathrooms in parks and
| such are often, by necessity, quite spartan. They have no
| toilet stall doors, don't have the soap filled as often as
| necessary, have those weird metal mirrors rather than more
| useful mirrors.
|
| I would honestly pay for rent a potty even if public toilets
| were (and they should be!) available and convenient.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| I'm not very well traveled, but I think I've used a pay
| toilet in every country I've been to other than the US (and
| the little bit of Canada I've seen) They're illegal in many
| US cities (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_to_End_P
| ay_Toilets...), and American taxpayers don't like footing the
| bill. So we end up with Starbucks and Dunkin as de facto pay
| toilets, where you have to buy a pastry or drink to take a
| pee.
|
| I don't really understand why it should be illegal to pay
| someone for a vital human need
| didgeoridoo wrote:
| Classic first order thinking. Forcing someone to pay
| directly to access a toilet is yucky. Voting against pay
| toilets makes you a good person.
|
| Second order effects? Please. Those aren't on the ballot,
| and are hard to stuff into a sound bite.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| > Voting against pay toilets makes you a good person.
|
| Voting against pay toilets makes you a foolish and
| counterproductive person that thinks you're a good
| person.
| RobinL wrote:
| A public good is a commodity or service that is non-
| excludable (no one can be effectively excluded from using it)
| and non-rivalrous (one person's use of the good does not
| reduce its availability to others)
|
| Examples include clean air, national defense, and public
| parks.
|
| This isn't to say they shouldn't be provided by the
| government, but they're definitely not a public good
| didgeoridoo wrote:
| Is there no room for grocery stores and restaurants too,
| since all humans need food?
|
| If you're looking for a role for government here, I could see
| budgeting in some tax breaks for local businesses that make
| their restrooms publicly accessible. The infrastructure is
| already there, no need for a complicated business model.
| trogdor wrote:
| > I could see budgeting in some tax breaks for local
| businesses that make their restrooms publicly accessible.
|
| People significantly underestimate the cost of maintaining
| clean public restrooms in urban areas.
|
| When restrooms are used properly, maintenance costs are
| reasonable and predictable. But that is not what happens.
|
| Restrooms contain private areas, and that reality invites
| other uses, like drug use, prostitution, and sleeping. And
| those uses come at a steep cost.
|
| Separately, in my experience, many businesses _do_ make
| their restrooms available to people who look presentable
| and who ask politely. They just don't advertise it, and
| they may even advertise the opposite.
| smcleod wrote:
| This. Absolutely spot on. The profitisation common services
| is absolutely disgusting. It is literally the reason we have
| governments to build and make available for the people.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| That might be ideal, but we don't live in an ideal world. The
| public government isn't providing this in nearly any large US
| city. A few that have tried have ended their attempts due to
| the cost. CTA provided restrooms at the stations till the
| 1970s, but ended access to those due to the costs and safety
| concerns. Having pay restrooms would be an alternative to
| have no option at all.
| dawnerd wrote:
| This is already a thing in Europe and it's awful. Paying a euro
| or two just to go sucks.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| I'm _in_ Europe, and I think it 's great. :)
| lazide wrote:
| Alternate take - the toilets in Europe, while a euro or two,
| are actually nice and relatively well maintained. And
| relatively common.
|
| So while you do have to keep a few coins on you, unlike
| cities like NYC or SF you can actually go to the toilet when
| you want and it isn't a stress inducing nightmare wondering
| what sort of hell you are going to run across if you do
| actually find a toilet.
|
| Places with 'free water' almost always have terrible water
| availability and quality. Same problem.
| dawnerd wrote:
| The ones I used in Paris recently were no better, one
| worse, than any other free public toilet. IMO tourist taxes
| should be the thing paying for it.
| briHass wrote:
| If that got me a reasonably clean and reasonably available
| location, that's money well spent.
|
| Cleaning and maintaining a restroom isn't free, and something
| needs to pay for it. Highway rest stops are usually pretty
| clean, but they are paid for with tolls/very high gas taxes.
| saturn8601 wrote:
| This is anecdotal but in my experience the restrooms still
| suck and are poorly maintained (This was my experience in
| Hamburg and Amsterdam in 2023). What is even worse is that
| there seems to be a little recourse to correct it in the
| short term. There isn't a "Free market" of toilet companies
| because the same firm seems to capture all the toilets in a
| given area. So you have the worst of all worlds, you have
| to pay to use a poorly maintained restroom and there is
| little you can do about it...at least as a traveler not
| familiar with the local customs. Maybe locals can enact
| some improvement.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| Why does it suck? It's a negligible amount of money for the
| person using the toilet, but the revenue is enough to pay for
| people to maintain and clean the toilets regularly. Being
| able to use a clean toilet for what is essentially a rounding
| error in your budget at the end of the month seems like a
| worthwhile tradeoff.
| Gigachad wrote:
| My experience in Italy was that the paid toilets were worse
| maintained than basically every free toilet in Australia.
|
| One of the toilets I paid for didn't even have a seat.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| That's just normal in Italy. The seats are often missing.
| People are used to it.
| munch117 wrote:
| Spending the money doesn't suck. Having to wrangle the
| payment system when you're in a hurry, that does suck.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| The last time I went I just had to blip my credit/debit
| card. Very convenient. (Stockholm Central Station,
| Sweden).
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Back in school when my allowance was 5 euros a week, even
| 50 cents was prohibitively expensive for me to go to the
| toilet. Even today I refuse to use the two euro toilets and
| I'm not the only person walking up, seeing the price, and
| turning around.
|
| This stuff is not priced to be a reasonable convenience,
| but to be a better alternative to soiling yourself in
| public. The most insulting part is paying 2 euros to pee
| into a smelly urinal and getting a 50 cent discount code
| for the nearby fast food stand as a courtesy, because I
| haven't spent enough apparently.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| I remember as a poor student, having to pay the
| equivalent of 50 cents felt like robbery. Today with a
| steady income I'm happy to pay a dollar, or even two, to
| be able to use a clean restroom.
|
| I think the general problem is interesting: how do we
| price necessities when our ability to pay is so
| different?
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| The ideal answer is, of course, that we shouldn't put
| prices on most necessities, and the primary reason that
| we do is to threaten people into demeaning jobs.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| You collect tax to pay for the necessities and then don't
| charge a per-use fee.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Out of curiosity, where is it a full EUR2? I visited
| various places with pay toilets in 2022, and while it was
| more than I'd prefer, it was still only something like 1
| or 1.25
| danaris wrote:
| > It's a negligible amount of money for the person using
| the toilet
|
| Spoken with the voice of privilege.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| Well, we're talking about Western Europe here. You either
| live there, or you're a tourist. Even if you don't have
| an Euro, you can just ask a random person and chances are
| they'll give one to you.
| baseballdork wrote:
| Yikes, begging to use a restroom? You'd think using the
| bathroom would be within the realm of a human right.
| amatecha wrote:
| It sucks when your credit card isn't accepted and the
| machine won't read your coins correctly or missed one and
| you are thus just 10 cents short of being allowed to use
| the washroom and now the three people waiting behind you
| are just like "wtaf is taking so long".
|
| Experienced this a while back in a shopping mall in France.
| Like, a mall has to be one of the most profitable places in
| a modern city, pretty sure they can afford to staff a
| couple washroom staff during business hours while everyone
| is pouring money into all the mall vendors.
| spencerchubb wrote:
| Better than not being able to go. That's the beauty of
| capitalism
| TheCleric wrote:
| "Let's take something people will have to do, and make it
| so the most desperate among them will pay us to do it." is
| a distillation of capitalism, but I wouldn't use the word
| beauty to describe it.
| spencerchubb wrote:
| The current solution in many cities is _no bathroom_. I
| would rather pay for a bathroom than shit myself
| hypeatei wrote:
| I think this model could benefit from dynamic pricing - higher
| demand equals higher prices.
| screamingninja wrote:
| Or perhaps higher demand can be a signal to increase supply
| instead of price gouging. Why incentivize anyone to limit
| supply?
| hypeatei wrote:
| Sorry, my comment was a joke, I wasn't being serious.
| didgeoridoo wrote:
| I think we should charge by the pound. Not because it makes
| any actual sense, but because it would be hilarious.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Combine it with AI video recognition. If you walk up calmly
| its $1, if you're dancing around and crossing your legs it's
| $5.
| citizenkeen wrote:
| This is so disgusting. The idea of milking maximum profit from
| such a basic human function really highlights the way extreme
| capitalism trends toward evil.
| Arnt wrote:
| I know sometime who ran a gas station. They had to clean
| their toilet after every fifth customer on average. That's a
| real cost.
|
| Explain what's evil, please.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Evil is apparently when people who don't know what it costs
| to provide a service think they should get it for free.
| freedomben wrote:
| I agree very much in principle, but pragamatically (i.e. in
| the real world) this strikes me as utopian and impossible, at
| least until human nature changes.
|
| Toilets are a scarce resource (economically speaking), and
| thus there must be some rationing method in place. If it's
| not monetary, it will be something else. In a perfect world
| there would be plentiful bathrooms and everyone would
| diligently clean up after themselves and take the trash out
| when full, so operating costs would be minimal (power and
| water bill and occassional maintenance). In the real world
| though, people don't do that, meaning you have to hire people
| to clean. Some people will also vandalize, which gets
| expensive in a hurry. Public (government-run) restrooms tend
| to be even worse because they aren't actively monitored, and
| for whatever reason people like to trash them.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| The idea that giving up all your privacy isn't worse than
| spending a dollar really highlights something
| jtsiskin wrote:
| Wait until you hear about the cost of food, shelter, and
| healthcare...
| TeaBrain wrote:
| It's a proposed alternative to having no option at all.
| Restrooms are too expensive to maintain and prone to misuse
| to justify maintaining free options, which is why public
| restrooms have become virtually non-existent in US cities,
| following the eradication of pay restrooms. It is a much more
| moral option than giving the public no option at all, other
| than to become a customer at a business in order to be
| granted access to the business's restrooms, which would
| typically be far more expensive.
|
| In some places, like Phoenix, the situation is currently so
| bad that even paying customers cannot use the restroom in
| some smaller shops, due to the large homeless population.
| Having any option at all, whatever the cost, would be a far
| better alternative.
| Amezarak wrote:
| Maybe the "prone to misuse" bit is the problem, and we need
| to address the underlying issues there. In most of rural
| and suburban America, all public businesses have bathrooms
| freely available for the public (i.e., no asking for a key
| or whatever), and free, clean government-run public
| bathrooms exist in public spaces like parks or "downtown"
| areas. I see this slowly shifting, but obviously the
| problem is changing behaviors and not some feature of human
| nature.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| I agree that it is largely an urban problem, which is
| likely in large part due to the greater density of urban
| homeless populations and crime.
| lwhi wrote:
| Where do you go if you don't have any money?
| hypeatei wrote:
| And you don't even have to be poor, what if you just aren't
| carrying your wallet/phone?
| Zambyte wrote:
| My wallet feels as essential as my keys when leaving my
| home. Are you just making the point for people who forget
| their wallet, or do you think there is good reason to
| intentionally not carry your wallet?
| hypeatei wrote:
| No, I just think we should resist the notion we need to
| carry things on us at all times to exist as a human
| being.
| ghaff wrote:
| I can _exist_ without carrying things. Practically, if I
| 'm walking around a city, I probably want to have ID and
| some way of paying for things (and to get back into my
| home which is presumably locked). If I just take a stroll
| on the river path from my house I often don't carry
| anything but mostly I do.
| ghaff wrote:
| Some people these days just carry a couple cards with
| their phone but that's still functionally a wallet. And a
| lot of things are headed towards contactless payment with
| phones or smart watches though I'd have trouble wanting
| to depend on that.
| astura wrote:
| I don't ever carry my wallet or keys when I go for a
| walk, which is usually once a week when it's nice out. I
| do carry my phone, for podcasts. My door has a keypad to
| get in.
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| How would you pay if you only have a twenty? Do they take
| credit cards?
| Zambyte wrote:
| I think you meant to reply to a different comment.
| wyatt_dolores wrote:
| Many do take credit cards. In The Netherlands and
| Belgium, the pay toilets in train stations allow tap to
| pay with a NFC card or your phone. Toilets in the
| airports are always free, though.
| kibwen wrote:
| The answer to this question should be self-evident. A city
| either offers free public toilets, or it becomes a free
| public toilet.
| lwhi wrote:
| A quid pro poo situation, if you will ...
| freedomben wrote:
| I like it, but quo and poo are a bit too different to
| work.
|
| Maybe "Quid Poo Quo"?
| lwhi wrote:
| Yes .. better!
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It's also a tragedy of the commons thing: you offer free
| toilets but don't fund maintaining them every half hour so
| they are only usable by a few before they become completely
| thrashed and unusable. Or they are used as
| drug/prostitution dens and are never available anyways
| except for whoever got lucky to grab and squat them. A free
| resources that isn't available isn't very useful when you
| need to go.
|
| King county just pulled the plug on a pilot for public
| restrooms at a couple of transit stations because with
| maintenance and, more significantly, security the cost was
| $77/use [1], we simply can't afford that. Seattle famously
| bought five multi million dollar self cleaning toilets that
| only lasted a few years [2].
|
| [1] https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/07/17/king-county-to-
| close-...
|
| [2] https://portlandloo.com/seattles-failed-experiment-
| with-sub-...
| qwerpy wrote:
| I was wondering how far I would have to go to see King
| County come up. Not very far!
|
| We simply can't have nice things here. At least not in
| the Seattle city core. Everyone says "just have free
| bathrooms bro" but no one saying that actually has had to
| pay for and maintain a free bathroom in downtown Seattle.
| Discussing exactly why this is the case tends cause a
| flamewar, but the fact that we can't be honest about the
| cause means we'll never have the nice things.
| medymed wrote:
| This was the argument that let NYC to ban coin based toilets
| in decades past, with the assumption that people should not
| need to pay and businesses/govt should provide restrooms for
| free. But no replacement was ever provided.
|
| Come to NYC, walk around busy areas for a while you will not
| infrequently see less fortunate people urinating in the
| subway stations, on the sidewalk, on walls and buildings, by
| trash cans, and sometimes (if the mood strikes them) right in
| the middle of the street.
| lwhi wrote:
| People are always going to need to do a number two though.
|
| Although it pains me to sat this .. maybe there's a need
| for a disposable potty, with sanatary wipes, that can go in
| the trash.
|
| Maybe these should be given free to street sleepers?
| squigz wrote:
| What a wonderful world we live in.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Some place in Switzerland offered two classes of bathroom.
| Paid clean ones that are maintained and a very simple free
| one with squats, not maintained hourly and only sprayed down
| a few times a day. Still much cleaner than I expected.
| nanomonkey wrote:
| It's not uncommon to give subsidies for folks that can't
| afford modern conveniences (free phones, food, housing). I
| could imagine one could give out tokens, or pay cards that
| are only usable for bathrooms to those who can't afford to
| pay for it themselves.
|
| Not to mention a lot of us "pay it forward". I used to pay
| for the people behind me when crossing the Bay Bridge, or for
| the next person that was buying a coffee.
| 38 wrote:
| Disgusting. What about people that can't afford it? Should they
| just shit on the sidewalk?
| Ekaros wrote:
| I was thinking, Uber of toilets. You can order mobile toilet
| driven to you and then you are charged reasonable rate for
| distance and travel time it did. Plus ofc, standard fee. And
| time you spend inside.
| tzs wrote:
| I've wondered if it would make sense for hotel/motel chains to
| offer a paid toilet service. Their locations already have a
| bunch of toilets (one in each guest room plus ones for the
| lobby and for meeting rooms) and already have cleaning people
| there to keep those clean.
|
| Sell day passes that give you 24 hours access. If I were, say,
| going to drive from Seattle to Los Angeles I'd pay $20 to buy a
| pass that would let me pull into any Motel 6 along the way to
| use a clean bathroom.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| 95%+ of hotels/motels do not have 24 hour cleaning staff, and
| the guest service agents working the computer are not going
| to be wanting to clean bathrooms.
|
| All those branded 80 to 120 room hotel/motels are trying to
| reduce the staffing outside of 7AM to 4PM, even to the point
| of having check in kiosks that video call you to someone in
| South Asia/Phillipines/South America.
| trogdor wrote:
| Someone who can afford to pay $20/day for a bathroom pass is
| probably presentable enough that they can walk in and get
| permission to use the bathroom for free.
| p51-remorse wrote:
| And if you're driving, you can always stop at any gas
| station.
|
| Top off your tank if it makes you feel better, but
| realistically no one there is getting paid enough to cross
| reference gas buyers with poopers.
| Cerium wrote:
| That use case is already covered by costco membership. Costco
| locations are nicely distributed near freeway exits across
| the nation. Plenty of parking, decent bathrooms, and you can
| get food of you need it.
| underseacables wrote:
| It appears to be called Flush!
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/05/this-app-lets-cafes-and-
| co....
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Please no more fucking apps. If I have to tell someone my legal
| name to shit I'm gonna shoot myself
|
| Just take quarters and give poor people some cash so they can
| shit too. Please please please
| bombcar wrote:
| Apple Maps already shows restrooms available publicly - search
| "restroom" and you'll see.
|
| But it finds things like mall bathrooms and park bathrooms but
| not gas station bathrooms, at least the first time I tried it.
|
| The real problem is when you're in an unfamiliar area and don't
| know the local secrets about where restrooms can be found.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Everyone knows that people whose usage of the Rent-a-Potty
| is, ahem, strongly correlated with the state transition to an
| orange or red dot face price hikes, or possibly even expulsion
| from the app as a whole, so there's good reason to leave it at
| least as good as you found it.
|
| This seems very susceptible to abuse. You (not you personally,
| but someone malicious) go into the restroom, mark it in a poor
| state, do whatever awful thing people do to get restrooms in
| the state in which they're so often found, and leave. Now it's
| the last person, who left it in a perfectly good state, who
| gets the blame.
| ajwin wrote:
| I live in South Australia and I feel like public toilets are
| ubiquitous and still increasing in number. Mostly they are either
| accessible or have a separate accessible toilet. The only
| exception to this is in areas where they have public social
| issues. My mum is a little bit financial about toilets so she
| always struggles when overseas. We even have small self cleaning
| toilets at the small playgrounds in the suburbs. It would be
| interesting to understand why we ended up like this.
| wirthjason wrote:
| The article has one good point: there's diseases and conditions
| that cause people to need the bathroom, and even if you don't
| have this upset stomachs are common enough that at some point
| it'll impact you. Parents with young kids realize it too. So this
| is everyone's problem.
|
| However the article misses the point with statements like this.
| Quite simply, Lowe was right: there is often no place to go.
|
| There are often many places to go, it just might not be a public
| toilet. There's restaurants and coffee shop, gas stations,
| stores. Don't confuse no public places to go with no places to
| go.
|
| Public toilets are one of those things where all it takes is one
| person to mess up a good situation for everyone else.
|
| There's no incentive for people to treat them nicely. There's an
| asymmetry, people want to use public toilets but who wants to
| clean public toilets? It's always "someone else job."
|
| I see no problem having a little friction as a way to help
| control it. A small charge to use the bathroom or social capital
| of asking can be enough to remedy the problems of misuse.
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| Some people literally don't have money for a small charge and
| they shouldn't be denied using a public bathroom because of
| that. You're right about everything else though.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Well, I don't have any social capital. Would rather pay $10 for
| a public toilet than beg to pee.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I have been recently in a trip through Japan and I have been very
| impressed by the abundance and the quality of the public toilets.
|
| On the other hand, in Japan there are extremely few places with
| public trash cans. Those few that exist are typically associated
| with vending machines for beverages.
| Narishma wrote:
| > On the other hand, in Japan there are extremely few places
| with public trash cans. Those few that exist are typically
| associated with vending machines for beverages.
|
| IIRC they removed them after a terrorist attack in the 90s.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| But... Why?
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Because the bomb was placed in a trash can. It's like
| having to remove your shoes to board an airplane in the US:
| firmly securing the exact door the horse has bolted
| through, and not paying any attention to other holes in the
| wall.
| tkgally wrote:
| The nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 [1] was
| quite traumatic for those of us living in Japan then. There
| was a very real fear of follow-up attacks. Security was
| tight for a long time in public places, and facilities like
| trash cans and lockers that could be used to plant bombs or
| poisons were removed. It took years for the tensions to
| ease, and it seems that even today the people in charge of
| public places hesitate to reinstate trash cans.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack
| krackers wrote:
| >people in charge of public places hesitate to reinstate
| trash cans.
|
| I'd assume that these days the lack of desire is mostly a
| matter of funding. Possibly also something about reducing
| the number of crows/rats digging through trash.
|
| Japan also has a rather strict trash sorting system, and
| not having public trash cans might serve as a forcing
| function to sort things properly (since if you get it
| wrong things will be attributed to you). Similarly it's
| possible that under some circumstances, under-serviced
| public trash cans could end up increasing the amount of
| litter on streets: people may be more likely to stuff
| things into an overflowing trash can (or dump stuff next
| to it) rather than carrying it with them.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| Because it's very easy to put a bomb in a trash can and
| maim a lot of people.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| The ones next to vending machines are for recycling of beverage
| containers, not for general garbage.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I'm a runner and public water fountains seem to be as well. Is
| there some sort of website that maps public water fountains in
| your city? I run pretty far and I don't want to carry water.
| nradov wrote:
| Strava has that, although there are some data quality issues.
|
| https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/6525900339725-S...
| habi wrote:
| As suggested in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41016144,
| OpenStreetMap is the thing for you; I suggest use the data with
| Organic Maps: https://organicmaps.app/
|
| You can search for ,,drinking" to find mapped
| fountains/drinking water:
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Ddrinking_w...
| wirthjason wrote:
| When I was in high school (ages ago) the boy's bathrooms didn't
| have doors. I guess it was to deter kids smoking, graffiti, and
| other bad things that happen. We were a middle class suburb so I
| don't know how often this happened anyways. I was fortunate to
| never need to go but I always remember it.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| Neither had toiler paper and toilet seats. Instead of weeding
| out bad kids who smoked and vandalized, all kids were punished.
| Negatively impacted nutrition and hydration habits during the
| following decades of my life.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| The government should simply mandate that all restaurants,
| supermarkets, event venues, etc. above a certain size should be
| required to have at least a certain number of free public
| toilets.
|
| Otherwise, the more stores that withdraw from offering free
| public toilets, the more burden it places on everyone else.
|
| If it causes a slight increase in labor cost, at least it the
| cost will be borne equally by all, and benefit will be borne most
| by the most vulnerable.
| burlesona wrote:
| The bathrooms are already mandated by the government, they just
| aren't required to be free. But in the overhwhelming majority
| of cases they are free.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| In Texas, fast food places almost always allow people to use
| their bathrooms.
|
| The few fast food places that do not let me go without complaint
| get a complaint to corporate and they lose my business for a few
| months.
| egypturnash wrote:
| In the US, we have the Committee To End Pay Toilets In America to
| thank for this state of affairs. It was an organization started
| as a joke back in the seventies, when pay toilets were very
| common in public spaces; it succeeded all too well. Pay toilets
| are banned across many states but there has been absolutely no
| work put into replacing them with public, free toilets. Nobody is
| willing to pay to maintain these, so if you can't pay the much
| higher tax of going into a coffee shop and buying a $10 drink,
| you are largely fucked. Large banks of pay toilets in places like
| bus stations, where everyone can take a dump for the minuscule
| cost of a coin, are long gone.
|
| IF you look sufficiently affluent, you can slip into a hotel or a
| department store (assuming your city's downtown still has those)
| and take a free dump in some pretty luxurious surroundings. But
| if you're at a point where that $10 drink for bathroom access is
| a big stretch then you're probably not going to make it through
| there without a run-in with security.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_to_End_Pay_Toilets...
| joshuanapoli wrote:
| The situation varies from state to state. In Florida, many
| businesses are required to have public restrooms. So you should
| be able to do your business without being coerced into buying
| that $10 drink.
| trogdor wrote:
| Florida's Building Code requires restaurants to _have_ one or
| more public restrooms.
|
| There is no state law that forces restaurants to allow people
| to _use_ those restrooms.
|
| Restaurants can refuse access to non-customers.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > Restaurants can refuse access to non-customers.
|
| And many do, because of the repeated experiences of non-
| customers destroying the restrooms. They aren't doing it
| just to be dicks to people who need to pee but don't want
| to buy something.
| exe34 wrote:
| would it help if there were mass shit-ins? say at council
| offices, outside the governor's office, etc.
| mcculley wrote:
| Florida Administrative Code Chapter 61C-1.004 2.a requires
| at least one bathroom for "its employees and guests". It is
| not clear to me if that means one is required to consider
| non-customers as "guests". But there is more law than the
| Florida Building Code.
|
| https://www.flrules.org/gateway/readFile.asp?sid=0&tid=2756
| 2...
| riku_iki wrote:
| Sounds like until someone sue restaurant for denying
| access to toilet, and this go through appellate court,
| they do what they want to do?
| zo1 wrote:
| Ahh, good old ambiguous laws strike again.
|
| You read it and might think guests applies to non paying
| customers. I read it and see it only applying to their
| guests, i.e. patrons of their restaurant. 3rd person
| might interpret as simply meaning the restaurant
| determines who is a guest and it can swing either way.
| 4th person is a lawyer and thinks some random other part
| of this document or other law or court case defines guest
| therefore his interpretation is correct. 5th person is
| like, we don't care, public access to toilets is a human
| right and proclaims the first 4 are bigots and such
| restaurants are to be sued. 6th person starts an
| organization to catalog all misbehaving restaurants and
| labels them discrimatory. And so it goes, and will go on
| till the end of time.
| bombcar wrote:
| bombcar's guide to determining if you're a nice part of
| town - how easy it is to get to a restroom
|
| nicest places? good signage, no need to even interact with
| a human, restrooms that look like the Taj Mahal.
|
| middling places? restrooms exist, but you might have to ask
|
| bad places? restrooms are hidden, maybe if the clerk is
| nice you can use theirs, or you have to buy something
|
| horrible places? restrooms that do exist look like
| something from a horror movie, they're locked stronger than
| Fort Knox, and even then you have to buy, beg just to
| borrow the key
| freedomben wrote:
| Interesting thank you, I had never heard of this! It is
| unfortunate how sometimes the Law of Unintended Consequences
| bites activists in the ass. You see a worthy cause and want to
| improve the situation, only to end up making things worse.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| This is also what I would call "the road to hell is paved
| with good intentions"
|
| We need to do a better job scrutinizing cause-effect for
| things, not just make decisions on a knee jerk "that sounds
| well intentioned"
| karmakaze wrote:
| This might fall in the category of Unconsidered Consequences.
| One can't merely oppose a thing and not support a replacement
| and have the fallout be "oh well, we tried". It's not like
| all the pay toilets disappeared all at once leaving no free
| ones, the group was 'making progress' in their myopic goal
| all the while.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| It's rent control but for toilets. Obviously the problem is
| that toilet landlords got greedy, and it'll be fine when
| they stop being greedy /s
| d0mine wrote:
| "unintended"? -- what is the most obvious thing that can
| happen if paid toilets are outlawed and there is no money
| (never is) for public toilets?
|
| Obviously, there is more to the story. People are not that
| dumb. Somebody wanted it that way for a reason.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > ... bans in New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, California,
| Florida, and Ohio.
|
| A good proxy for misgovernment at the state level. Sound,
| publicly beneficial policy would be to leave the pay toilets
| be, but subsidize local municipality's public toilet efforts.
| But that would cost real money, whereas yanking business
| permits is nearly free, as far as the state's balance sheet
| shows.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Surely $10 is like triple what you'd actually be in for
| sharkrice wrote:
| In the past, public restrooms in China also required a fee,
| ranging from five to two yuan per visit. It wasn't until 1998
| when a rural youth named Ge Rui was charged three jiao at a
| restroom in Zhengzhou Railway Station. To seek justice for this
| three-jiao fee, Ge Rui personally paid 50 yuan for the lawsuit,
| taking Zhengzhou Railway Bureau to court. The case went through
| two trials, the details of which we will skip. In short, Ge Rui
| won the lawsuit in 2001. A month later, the National Development
| and Reform Commission, citing "strong complaints from
| passengers," mandated that all public transportation venues must
| provide free access to restrooms. To this day, most public
| restrooms in China do not charge fees, and most government
| agencies, institutions, companies, shopping malls, hotels, office
| buildings, etc., allow tourists to use their restrooms for free,
| which is seen as a symbol of civilization. Presently, public
| restrooms in China are generally well-maintained, and since China
| has strict drug laws, there are no issues with drug addicts,
| marijuana odors, needles, or syringes.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Your prices are off. Not 5 to 2 yuan in the 90s, more like 5 to
| 2 jiao. I remember 5 jiao bathroom places being common into the
| late 00s in Beijing (and literally why I would carry a few 5
| jiao notes whenever I went out, along with tissue). There is no
| judicial independence or precedent in China, and localities
| typically set their own policies and standards. Even mandates
| are often just unfunded wishful thinking, you can still find
| pay toilets in China today especially in tourist places.
|
| Starbucks would always have a sit down toilet in Beijing malls,
| which was useful if the alternative was a squat toilet. But
| availability is nice, so that sit down toilet wasn't very
| available and the squat toilet in the mall was, so whatever.
| The old guys smoking in the bathroom was a pretty big problem.
| 20 years ago at least, even in the squats. I feel sorry for
| girls, though, a fancy mall in xidan would always have a huge
| line for the women's restroom that made my bladder cringe, well
| past 2015.
| sharkrice wrote:
| Indeed, you are correct in mentioning the range from five
| jiao to two yuan. During my travels, I have often encountered
| overcrowded restrooms, especially in scenic areas and popular
| highway rest stops. The issue of long queues for women's
| restrooms is also significant, along with the presence of
| cigarette smoke. However, paid restrooms are indeed rare
| nowadays, at least in Zhuhai, which may be due to its status
| as a tourist city; the public restrooms there are well-
| maintained. When I can't find a public restroom, I often use
| the facilities in banks or government offices. As you
| mentioned, while local judicial rulings may not apply
| nationwide, central administrative directives do have a broad
| impact. In Guangdong Province, I rarely encounter obstacles
| when using restrooms in government departments, except during
| the pandemic.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| China is big and its bathrooms are diverse. The worst
| bathroom I encountered was 5000 meters up in Sichuan, it
| was a shed on the road over a hole, and two very thin
| slippery wooden boards to squat on (yes, I was scared to
| death of falling in). Western China is always going to be
| different, however.
|
| The government has a limited attention span, so they'll
| start a 5 year plan to improve public restroom access, but
| then it is forgotten a year later. Things do gradually
| improve, but usually via the private sector (more places to
| wash up at restaurants and such). If you are living a
| normal life in a tier 1-3 city, you've already made all
| your adjustments and know what to expect. I'm less
| confident in less developed areas, and strike it as a win
| when I find something clean and sit down.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| What does China do with drug addicts? Do they just not have any
| because they so effectively prevent drug trafficking?
| tambourine_man wrote:
| I highly recommend this movie from Wim Wenders, Perfect Days,
| about a Tokyo public bathroom worker:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QzZBbX5A1FA
|
| I know the synopsis doesn't do it justice, but really, go watch
| it. One the best movies I've seen in a while.
| burlesona wrote:
| So the Author is based in Spain and writing about life in Spain.
| My experiences traveling in Europe have been that bathrooms are
| often hard to find there ... but, as a tourist, I've definitely
| not seen enough of normal daily life to know.
|
| Meanwhile many comments here seem to be reflexively decrying the
| situation in the US. That makes no sense to me. Every business
| has to have a bathroom, and in the overwhelming majority of the
| country these bathrooms are not locked and nobody minds if you
| come inside and use one.
|
| There are two exceptions, that _most_ of us aren't visiting very
| often:
|
| (1) some of our city centers where there are concentrated
| disorder and mental health problems
|
| (2) the most crowded tourist destinations
|
| These places tend to keep bathrooms locked, but you can usually
| just ask and get the key or code. Many have signs saying you need
| to make a purchase but few try to enforce that.
|
| These exceptions are indeed annoying, but I believe the solution
| is better mental health care and generally more effective
| community policing so that businesses in those locations could
| follow the norms of the rest of the country.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Start putting addicts and rabid homeless in mental wards/jails
| and only then will public bathrooms be tolerable. Hire some local
| muscle to keep an eye on things. Problem solved. These days I'd
| rather spend $5-$10 on a beer or souvenir to use a private
| bathroom with my kid vs potentially encountering a deranged man
| masterbating or shooting up.
|
| The real civil catastrophe is the enablement of this behavior.
| How come we can't figure this out in 2024 but for 1000s of years
| it was the absolute bare minimum that was expected from a
| society?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Public bathrooms are nasty even when there aren't homeless
| people or addicts around. Ever been on a road trip?
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Highway reststop restrooms have been some of the cleaner
| restrooms I've been in. Gambling between them and a random
| fast food bathroom, I'd pick the reststop.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Major name truck stops are also mostly good in my
| experience, as are bigger gas stations that are right off
| the interstate (more variable).
|
| Yeah fast food places are hit and miss, and post-COVID most
| are not open past 10pm or so.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Well I used to clean bathrooms as part of my first job.
| What you see is after people like us have gone through and
| cleaned it. I've seen piss everywhere. Poop everywhere.
| Puke. Blood. Used catheters and feminine hygiene products.
| Soiled clothing left behind for me to throw away (begging
| the question how they left without pants). I would clean
| the bathroom I was assigned probably once an hour and each
| time there was something disastrous to clean at that
| interval. Many people are simply disgusting; I can't
| imagine they would ever do this stuff in their own home.
| Never had a homeless person or obvious drug addict at this
| location, just people coming off the highway.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Nobody wants to raise taxes to spend money on mental health,
| unfortunately. In the US getting any sort of mental health
| treatment is a horrible slog.
| binary132 wrote:
| This feels like a cope for the fact that we let people defecate
| in public now.
| underseacables wrote:
| I lament this too. Paris has nice public pay toilets and Germany
| has the custom of leaving a euro. Maybe a company will open a
| series of public-private toilets in major cities. The government
| could help by providing space, utilities etc. The company charges
| a low rate, keeps things stocked and cleaned, police patrol it
| and everyone benefits.
|
| I understand the arguments of drugs and sex, but architecturally,
| socially, and civically we can mitigate that and should towards
| the common goal.
| more_corn wrote:
| If you go into a business that doesn't have a "public" restroom
| leave immediately and never go back.
|
| I don't want to live in a world where I have to hold it, so I
| vote with my feet. And I assure you, that is the one thing that
| business owners pay attention to. If you want to make it clear
| you can post your reasoning on their yelp page.
|
| I would prefer a model like Germany has where instead of paying
| $50M for a public toilet and then service contracts, the
| government pays businesses to keep their bathrooms open. $50M
| goes a long way at $15/hr. Businesses add slightly more staff and
| bathroom maintenance is just part of the job.
|
| Sadly I am not in a position to make this policy dream a reality
| so I must push the upkeep cost onto the business owner.
| djmips wrote:
| In Canada where I live, public parks, which there are fairly
| numerous have public restrooms, however they started closing them
| after dark and in the city itself many of the places you used to
| be able to go without a problem like stores have now permanently
| closed their public washrooms or at least have a code / key you
| now need to get. Nevertheless, it feels like it's still much much
| better than places mentioned in the other comments.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| I noticed something related in my borough (not Manhattan), over
| the past decade there are far fewer trash cans. In front of
| places like Dunkin, Starbucks etc.
|
| These are the small things that add up to make people irritated.
| Having to shlep a block to throw out a few dirty napkins sitting
| in my car.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| Behold, some brave soul did NYC's subway toilet tour:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fE9y-1YCnMY
| gandalfian wrote:
| The best idea I've used is a small charge but paid by an honesty
| box. The most annoying are the turnstiles that require exact
| coins only. Mostly to pay for the attendant who can't give change
| or accept an overpayment. If you don't have two 20p pieces your
| money is no good.
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