That's exactly the tradeoff. Pay toilets are pretty nice when your alternative is either having to patronize a business purely in order to use their bathroom,

That's exactly the tradeoff. Pay toilets are pretty nice when your alternative is either having to patronize a business purely in order to use their bathroom, or drop trou outside somewhere. Sure, in theory there could be wonderful tax-funded public toilets everywhere, but it's a hard sell to taxpayers: most of the time, locals aren't the ones getting caught in need of a bathroom. (I mean, how many times in your typical day do you use a public toilet? Probably not often; it's a thing you use when traveling, or as a tourist in a different city.) And thus they're understandably reluctant to divert tax money to pay for them, and they get to make the call.