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Pay toilets and NYT: a free market microcosm

106 points by BayAreaEscapee 6y ago

ggm 6y ago
I live in an economy with ubiquitous free toilets and they do not all descend to the unbearable. Socialised maintenance of the commons takes many forms. Only a reductionist believes the absence of paid toilets reduces toilets to the unspeakably bad. I concede the best toilets are free, but gatekept by transactional relationships of higher worth. The razors I steal from Singapore Airlines majestic marble temples in changi are both put out for me to steal and funded from my frequent flyer value. But, the toilets by the bayside I use when I go for fish and chips by the jetty are not, they are kept clean because we want that, to maximise utility for chip eaters. Sure, it's a "tax" -so what? You want it to devolve to a 50c charge and beggars shit in bags? Screw you.
- Macha 6y ago
  Yeah, I recall one mall in my home town had a pay toilet, which was the only well known pay toilet in the city. So everyone used the toilet in burger king, which was free and more conveniently placed than the mall's own toilets anyway. Plenty of other free toilets, both business run and government run.
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  > I concede the best toilets are free, but gatekept by transactional relationships of higher worth. That's not free in any useful sense of the word. A 5 star hotel doesn't charge extra to use the very nice toilet in your room, but it's not free.
  - ggm 6y ago
    Absolutely not, but in like sense, nothing is free. The dirty public toilets are free because of an externality: your gastro-enteritis costs you time and money, but the toilet owner doesn't care. Or, if its New Zealand, the bag of poo you tossed out the window of the car, is somebody else's problem. (I mention this, because lack of public toilets near hiking grounds, and a larger than normal population of backpackers in vans, living the good life, has lead to a surge of people flinging poo-bags into the wilds. People never cease to amaze me: come to the shire, visit the lord of the rings, see the mighty mountains, fling a bag of poo at it) The free public toilet in New zealand Designed by Hundertwasser is perhaps my favourite example of what you can get, if you stop obsessing about cost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundertwasser_Toilets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundertwasser_Toilets Singapore Airlines never said "we have the best toilets with amazing schmick razors to take as schwag" -it wasn't on the brochure when I got gold class. No, its not free. Overall none of the airport toilets are free, its assumed you bought rights to be inside the airport secured zone. But the basic toilets in Changi, are streets ahead of many other economies, and are not unusual: Public amenity in Singapore is really clean, and really well maintained. Only a reductionist would argue New Yorks toilet problem stems from a lack of paid toilets.
- airhead969 6y ago
  Yep. It's the capitalist mindset that disregards privilege and the suffering of the homeless because it's more expedient to scapegoat them in the name of a false dichotomy: "progress" and "ruin."
toothrot 6y ago
The author clearly has never cleaned toilets for a living, yet waxes philosophical, completely missing the point on why public services are kneecapped in this country.
- omegaworks 6y ago
  Public services are kneecapped in this country because non-white people use them. Same reason why we defunded public universities (imposing the student loan system) just as agitation was enabling women and people of color equal access.
  - seibelj 6y ago
    I don’t like public services because every time I have ever used public services, even extremely (excessively) overfunded ones in liberal coastal US cities, they have had mediocre to extremely shitty quality from the perspective of the consumer. Services aren’t supposed to be jobs programs. I like privatization as a rule. It has nothing to do with racism, it has to do with an intense dislike of being fleeced by politicians.
    - majormajor 6y ago
      I've seen plenty of shitty (sorry!) privatized toilets at various events and locations. They are rarely directly "paid" - more like the event holder rents them and provides them free of charge - but the privatization aspect hasn't guaranteed me some magical clean toilet experience. Sometimes us Americans just reveal ourselves to be selfish and... again... shitty.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      Services aren’t supposed to be jobs programs. Maybe they should be. What's more demeaning, being told you're not good enough for any jobs so we'll pay you to stay out of the way, or being told you're not good enough for any other jobs but here's a job that still needs to be done and you can do it?
analog31 6y ago
I was in a country that had pay toilets. What I observed during my trip was that every town had that one place where the coin mechanism just happened to be jammed, and the turnstile would give way with just a little push. I tended to pay anyway, but it seemed to be a practical solution. And that toilet tended to be a bit more dirty, probably because it was more crowded but cleaned on the same schedule as the rest. The free toilets at freeway rest areas in my state are just fine.
whatastory 6y ago
I don't want to seem too accusatory, but this just felt like an angry rant without much research. I've been to a few places on this earth, and while I know there are some Europeans who'll proudly talk about how paying for toilets helps keep them clean, I haven't noticed them being any better than gas station bathrooms in the US. Some are okay, some are total disaster sites. The only difference is someone or a machine standing at the door taking your money. Meanwhile, in East Asia, I've never encountered a pay toilet. I've also really only encountered truly dirty toilets in the middle of very remote parks. Japan, Taiwan, and Korea all have excellent free toilets. Even China does pretty decently. Parks and urban areas across the country have toilets that are well maintained, and I noticed public bathrooms even in the middle of residential areas around Beijing that were hosed down a few times a day. So no, I don't agree that the only way to fix things is to revert to literal nickel and diming. Learn from the countries that manage their systems better instead of giving up and saying it's impossible.
- cwwc 6y ago
  Yes, the toilets in Taiwan are great —- and free. They have masses of public toilets in park, along with cleaning attendants. But here is the rub —- in the US, they would be overrun with homeless (I’m not saying this is bad; just that it would be the reality) while in TW the people who are attending to them would likely be homeless were they in the US. Is part of this cultural? Yep, probably. Is part of it structural? I think so —- because there are roles for people in TW, the “lowest rung” of society, while the only role stateside is along the side of the road or perhaps a MCD worker.
  - alisonkisk 6y ago
    What are those roles in in TW? McD employees, for all their troubles, are well above "pooping in the park" in economic comfort.
    - mc32 6y ago
      The lowest rung there are the recyclers. They pick up recyclable trash (kind of like the trash bin ladies do in SF but unlike SF don't leave a strewn mess). They rummage through dumpsters looking for recyclable items, take them to places which can recycle them for pennies, but it's enough to survive. It's kind of like if you had people redeeming bottles and cans and lived in section-8 housing. But these people are going around in third hand bikes pulling hand fashioned carts, sometimes the carts are human driven if they don't have a bike. The big difference is there is no shame in being a recycling collector, but there is shame in being a burden to society.
Macha 6y ago
Has someone gone and bulk downvoted everyone that disagrees with the premise that toilets must be paid? It seems every comment is at 0 or negative
- cwwc 6y ago
  Weird, it seems so.
  - GoOnThenDoTell 6y ago
    Not weird The silent majority just wants to do their number 2 with minimum hassle
    - konjin 6y ago
      Or a vocal minority cares a lot more about inserting capitalism everywhere, even when there are plenty of examples of places where toilets work fine without being paid.
deleted 6y ago
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kgermino 6y ago
I’ve always felt that the advantage of pay toilets wasn’t that they were clean, it was that they exist. Walking around an American city trying to find a restroom can be extremely challenging, while in European cities I could almost always find a sign and a public restroom in short order (even outside the more touristy areas). I don’t know if there are actually more public toilets in those cities - or if the culture just includes more prominent signage - but remembering to carry change is way better than going shop to shop begging to use the toilet.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  What's wrong with asking to use a toilet? Is it so wrong to be part of a civilized society? Along the lines of OP, my free market solution is to keep pooping in the street until the chamber of commerce decides building a restroom is good for business.
  - bshep 6y ago
    Nothing wrong with asking. I think the person was trying to say that places wont let you use their toilets even if you ask.
- riantogo 6y ago
  My experience has be exactly the opposite. Never struggled to find a toilet in the US. In Europe, as a tourist, no public toilets and shops display prominent sign that it is for customers only. So often I had to buy $8 coke (served flat with half an ice-cube) for the privilege to use a toilet in the basement with space no bigger than the pot itself (and the pot has no toilet seat). Just sharing a counter experience.
  - dheera 6y ago
    > Never struggled to find a toilet in the US. On the east coast I've been able to find toilets just fine, especially with the wealth of subway stations and indoor malls and other places that typically have restrooms. California is a hell hole though. You can walk miles across town and find zero restrooms, sometimes an occasional locked restroom, and maybe some restaurants and coffee shops whose restrooms are almost always for "customers only". It's a pity because the weather here is great for long walks. You can pee in random bushes I guess (?) but there's no place to poo.
conradev 6y ago
San Francisco's 25 public toilets don't cost anything to use, but they make quite a lot in advertising revenue: https://missionlocal.org/2019/02/how-san-francisco-flushed-away-scores-of-millions-of-dollars-on-a-wretched-toilet-contract/ https://missionlocal.org/2019/02/how-san-francisco-flushed-a... (Unfortunately, the city doesn't see much of that)
- CaptainZapp 6y ago
  25 public toilets in all of San Francisco? And that's with a population density of 18,790.74/sq mi[1] Compare that to Zurich (city proper) with 322 public toilets[2] and a population density of 12,000/sq mi[3] I'm not surprised that people shit on the streets if they can't find a loo. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco [2] https://pee.place/en/l/Switzerland/Zurich-Canton https://pee.place/en/l/Switzerland/Zurich-Canton [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%BCrich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%BCrich
elihu 6y ago
> Kristof and the Times, of course, would prefer a national infrastructure project to provide free toilets. If you've followed this over the years, you will see many efforts at government provided toilets. Costs are often hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the effort falls apart. There are some free toilets. In Chicago, the park district still had some. Without the incentive to charge a bit of money, they were typically disgusting and dangerous. Most cities and towns already have a large number of free toilets in parks and businesses. Some are privately owned and maintained, some are publicly owned and maintained. There just aren't enough of them (in most US cities). This is clearly a problem that can be solved with a little planning and adequate funding. And realistically, a root of the cost problem is that one could expect that about 90% of the costs are created by 1% of the users. Bathrooms aren't expensive to operate as long as people don't make a mess. I find it surprising that even working a tech industry job in a building complex populated by generally competent, responsible adults that there are almost always paper towels on the floor of the bathroom. I can understand once in awhile maybe dropping one, or not noticing that it didn't make its way into the waste basket. Or a person with joint or mobility issues might not be able to reach down and pick it up. But still, it's a continuous thing. Why? Ideally we'd find a way to alter the average person's behavior not to make a mess in the bathroom, but that's easier said than done. I don't know what the right policies there would be that aren't overly intrusive.
- whiddershins 6y ago
  ‘ This is clearly a problem that can be solved with a little planning and adequate funding. ‘ That’s not true when costs can escalate to any amount. Which they can, and do. Regularly. With governmental projects.
  - elihu 6y ago
    Sure that could happen. But it doesn't have to. We already have a lot of public infrastructure: schools, roads, government buildings, parks, and so on. Some of those projects are managed well, and some aren't. Either way, we put up with it because on average the benefits of those things outweigh the costs. Public restrooms aren't fundamentally different from all the other forms of public infrastructure we already have.
GhostVII 6y ago
I feel like at the very least we could have some super basic open air toilets. No toilet paper, no roof, just a toilet with running water and a tap. Almost no maintenance, and people won't camp out inside, but objectively better than a tree or something. I suppose the lack of TP would be more ok for men than women though.
SamBam 6y ago
> One of the top 10 principles of economics is, don't silence prices in order to transfer incomes. My Google-fu can't find this dictum anywhere. Is it usually said in some other form?
- willdearden 6y ago
  Probably comes from the first and second theorems of welfare economics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfare_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfar...
Arn_Thor 6y ago
The author ignores or dismisses the many countries and cities in which publicly funded public toilets work very well. The problem with public services applied in the US is that it's often done piecemeal, and a lot of things only work when implemented and funded at scale. This is nothing but an ideological screed, without any substance.
zxcvbn4038 6y ago
I grew up in a city where every habitable structure had to have separate indoor functional toilets. Roach closets in the back of the building weren’t acceptable, shared bathrooms didn’t cut it, always out of order or bombed out toilets were not allowed, customers only was not allowed. So I was in for a shock just about everywhere else in the world. Make that everywhere else in America - a toilet in France might just be a hole in the floor, but at least it’s a clean hole in the floor. The toilets in New York City are horrific. Imagine trying to go to the bathroom in an airplane - an American airline not a fancy sovereign airline - except every surface is covered with standing fluids, the walls are alive, the lights are dim, there is no toilet paper, and there is always guy standing behind you that thinks a broken lock means you are looking for anonymous bathroom sex. That is assuming that the establishment has a public restroom, and you’ve made a purchase, and there isn’t a homeless guy with a Cosmo magazine occupying the only toilet for hours. Then on top of that imagine you have your young son or daughter with you and your trying to let them go to the bathroom or go to the bathroom yourself with letting them touch any surface or their clothing absorb any of the mysterious standing liquids. The bathroom scene from Poultrygeist captures it perfectly (very NSFW) https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2x2cz7 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2x2cz7 The toilets at LaGuardia airport will also greet you with a loud piercing siren if you sit for more then thirty seconds. That’s a really jerk move so I decided to see how long that siren would go, they shut off after approx twenty minutes. People always make fun of truck stop bathrooms but coming from NYC they are always a step up - clean, dry, vermin free, well lit, changing tables, soap, toilet paper, locks on the door, and I’ve yet to be propositioned in any of the truck stop bathrooms.
- Macha 6y ago
  The bit that always bothers me about US toilets is how poor the privacy is. The cubicle door is like 1m high and raised nearly 40cm off the floor, and often poorly fits on the frame. I'm told it's for ease of cleaning but we accomplish that with raising them only 10cm here and extending enough for at least a standing adult. That's not to say we don't have crappy stalls here, but they seem the norm in the US and the exception at home
  - zxcvbn4038 6y ago
jdeibele 6y ago
A lot of travelers swear by McDonalds near the highways. The restrooms are clean and I've never had an issue with using them before paying. Unlike the city, where the signs are either "no public restroom" or "restroom are for paying customers only". In Portland there are a variety of restrooms built by the city but they're almost all permanently closed. Too many drug deals, drug use, sex acts, etc. The city government likes to bill Portland as "the city that works" and has spent several million dollars on automated toilets much like the one described in the article. Recently the city has put a bunch of portable toilets in neighbhorhoods so that the homeless have access. Neighbors seem mostly tolerant if not happy about it. At first there were reports of a few of them being tipped over but I haven't heard much about it recently. The portables aren't attractive but it's one way of handling the need.
- jdlshore 6y ago
  The Portland Loo [1] is neither automated nor millions of dollars. They're $96,000 each, and 16 have been installed, for a total of $1.5 million. So either you're talking about something else or your information is incorrect. I wouldn't be surprised if they're all shut down now, due to Covid, but prior to that, they've always been open when I tried them. The other public toilets in Portland, that I'm aware of, are in the parks. They're typically in heavy brick buildings. I could see those costing millions in aggregate, but they also seem likely fairly standard "build it to last" park construction. They're not automated either. As relatively large brick buildings, I would expect them to be expensive. Regarding the point of the article—I much prefer toilets in the US to toilets in Europe. I remember trying to find a toilet at a mall in Norway and being out of luck due to not having the appropriate coin in the local currency. That's not something that would happen in the US. (Although, when I finally got in, it was quite nice.) Another pay toilet, at a train station, was worse than disgusting. I don't know who got my coin, but that was the only deposit I made... I couldn't stand to enter the place. In general, I'm much more confident in my ability to find a spot to do my business in the US than in Europe. Maybe because I expect to be able to swan into any coffee shop, gas station, or fast food chain (as you mentioned) and use the facilities. Although I'll admit that the bathrooms in Europe do tend to be nicer, on average, and I particularly appreciate the floor-to-ceiling dividers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Loo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Loo Edit: Apparently, only 15 Portland Loos have been installed in Portland, and the city has received $362,323 in royalty payments for the design, for a net outlay of just over $1 million.
adolph 6y ago
So Cochrane claims that toilet “attendant” work is “well suited to new immigrants.” Really? The rational for the claim is that immigrants “don't speak English, are not well attuned to American culture, and have little education or training.” Really? I don’t disagree with the overall point about public potty markets but there is something off putting about claiming that “dirty” jobs are for people without skills and that immigrants are a class of people without skills when the larger portion of those I see are highly accomplished people who are chronically undervalued.
- bekindandopen 6y ago
  That could make a great comedy sketch. A posh-speaking student on walkabout takes a temp job explaining public toilets to urban Australian pedestrians. A few iterations later, and I still find myself trying to think of ways to make the premise less offensive...live comedy must be ridiculously difficult these days.
  - adolph 6y ago
    It could make for solid comedy. I'm thinking something about the ick factor about assisting someone void, like an elderly person or a person with a movement disorder, as revulsion humor with a growing dawn of the human feeling that eventually we all become frail or incapable (if we are fortunate to live long enough, or survive an accident, or survive a life being born with an ability different), and that by serving others all benefit.
- konjin 6y ago
  How many people who clean toilets do you know?
  - adolph 6y ago
    Other than myself and other folks who have been in that line of work none.
WuTangCFO 6y ago
I have lived in London, NZ, Australia. All have had free toilets. Why? Growing up in NZ free bathrooms were normal so we take it for granted. Yes, a small population means that these facilities were less likely to be abused. But London? In Shoreditch, a part of East London that is full of pubs and hipsters quaffing the Devil's Dandruff the council sets up urinals in the street where any punter can see you pissing but only your back (it's an Octagonal urinal and you face a wall). This was a fantastic solution to an ancient problem. This may offend the yanks God-fearing sensibilities but surely a step up from seeing the perps member out in full view. The open nature of this urinal also means people are less likely to rob, kill or shag you. Surely one of you lads could bring the weeze trough to SF and make a bundle? A ye entrepreneurs or no?
- floren 6y ago
  Certainly not a new thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pissoir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pissoir It will not be implemented in SF because it's only suitable for men. Switzerland appears to have created a solution for women by providing disposable paper "funnels" so the ladies can use it too, but because people lack any decency they would all be stolen within minutes in SF--and if you think creating a male-only public urinal won't fly in SF, just wait until you propose that the women should have to put in a quarter to get a funnel that the men don't need :)
  - WuTangCFO 6y ago
    Thank you for the link. I enjoyed the historical photos! At Glastonbury music festival, the ladies call these funnels "she wees". Bring back the pissoir!
  - airhead969 6y ago
    Belgium towns often have these out for festivals and other events. Shaped like an X about 1.5 to 2m high and about 2 x 2m with a yellow hose draining to the nearest sewer. If they didn't, dudes would just pee wherever. I bet that women are out-of-luck and just go somewhere discreet.
- airhead969 6y ago
patio11 6y ago
This is always a fun thing to explain to people at home in Tokyo. "Oh wow this office building put the toilet outside the security cordon." "What." "Well the guard checking badges is there and the toilet is outside that, so, well, that would never happen [in a big city in US]." "... Do you think the valuable things in this building are stored... in the toilet?" "Ah, no, that's not the nature of the problem." "What is..." "... It's complicated." "How complicated can it be?" "It's actually not complicated but more of a taboo to acknowledge."
- draw_down 6y ago
  So funny that we all just blithely assume people of other cultures are insane idiots for not doing what we do.
- tkgally 6y ago
  In addition to the economic, political, and social factors discussed elsewhere in these comments, the notion of “taboo” also, I think, helps to explain the difference between the availability of public toilets in the U.S. and in Japan (and maybe other Asian countries). Nicholas Kristof’s column has a kind of “taboo-breaking” undertone, as if he is aware that he is writing about a subject that would normally not be mentioned in the New York Times. And, in fact, I don’t recall seeing similar articles more than a few times before in nearly six decades of reading mainstream U.S. print media. In contrast, in Japan, where I’ve been reading mainstream newspapers for nearly four decades, the topic is not taboo at all, and it’s not unusual to see articles about public toilets and related matters. A search at Google News in Japanese now finds recent articles (some paywalled, all in Japanese) about a survey of public toilets in Okayama City [1], a move to build more Western-style public toilets in Matsumoto City [2], a video released by Chiba Prefecture to promote better manners by users of public toilets [3], installation of a self-cleaning toilet in a park in Kamiamakusa City [4], and (timed to the tenth anniversary of the Fukushima disaster) local governments preparing emergency toilets for future disasters [5]. Most of these articles seem to be based on press releases from local governments. [1] https://www.sanyonews.jp/article/1107034 https://www.sanyonews.jp/article/1107034 [2] https://www.shimintimes.co.jp/news/2021/03/post-12877.php https://www.shimintimes.co.jp/news/2021/03/post-12877.php [3] https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOFB168BZ0W1A210C2000000/ https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOFB168BZ0W1A210C2000000/ [4] https://kumanichi.com/news/id128124 https://kumanichi.com/news/id128124 [5] https://www.niigata-nippo.co.jp/news/politics/20210309603080.html https://www.niigata-nippo.co.jp/news/politics/20210309603080...
sidpatil 6y ago
One example of a interesting model I haven't seen mentioned in the article or comments/discussion is the toilets at Bryant Park in NYC. They're publically accessible, maintained regularly, and staffed with attendants, but is paid for with private funds.
jimkleiber 6y ago
I said if I ever run for public office in the US, one of the first items on my agenda would be public toilets. In most cities, there aren't even paid public toilets, one has to rely on the goodness (and business interest) of Starbucks and the like. I think there are all sorts of downsides to not having public toilets besides the obvious of people using the street for a toilet. The stress people have by having to hold it in, the hesitation to drink too much water and therefore dehydration of people, etc. I think government should cater to some of the most basic needs of humans and I believe a sanctioned and sanitary place to relieve oneself should be high on that list.
Noumenon72 6y ago
For this American, free toilets were a triumph of socialism. I have never had to pay for a toilet in my life. (At the age of 25 I was refused the use of a toilet in a Chicago storefront, and I was shocked.) Most companies and governments keep their toilets cleaner than my own bathroom. Just don't live in the big, overcrowded cities, and stop voting for immigration to overfill the ones that still work.
wyattpeak 6y ago
I live in Australia, and we do have a few public toilets, but honestly 90% of the time if I need one when I'm out I'll use one in a food court or a department store or some other private enterprise which seems to have a financial incentive to provide good quality amenities.* Does this not happen in the US? And if not, can anyone muse as to why? I would figure that the incentives would be the same. * I expect that there's a legal requirement for many of these businesses to provide toilets, but the level to which they maintain them is without doubt over and above any requirement of law, certainly better than any public facilities.
baron816 6y ago
The Left keeps referring to things as a “human right” (housing is a human right, healthcare is a human right, etc.). I don’t totally disagree, but they mean that if something is a human right, then the government should provide it to everyone. The case for government providing healthcare to everyone is much stronger than it providing housing for everyone. Why? Because humans are much better at making decisions about where to live than about their medical treatment. That’s it. Rights are irrelevant.
- Jochim 6y ago
  A government option doesn't mean that it's the only option. No one suggesting the government provide housing is suggesting that it becomes the only provider of housing. One of the primary goals is to ensure a good supply of at cost housing stock that can give renters some security and act as a controlling factor on private rents and house prices. The UK sold off much of it's public housing stock after the 1980s. The scheme was billed as a way to get poor families onto the property ladder but many of the homes were "resold" the same day to private landlords. The result is that housing is now massively unaffordable except for the highest earners and landlords. Private landlords drive up buying prices to the point that individuals cannot afford the deposit because they can extract the cost of the mortgage + profit in rent, the higher rents then make it more difficult for the individual to save the required deposit and the cycle repeats.
u678u 6y ago
The USA has a reputation for free markets it isn't really true. Pay Toilets were banned in the 70s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_toilet#U.S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_toilet#U.S.
solatic 6y ago
> The problems of public infrastructure are not money. The problems of American public infrastructure are exactly money, which is to say, the differences in funding capital projects versus funding maintenance. Forget public toilets for a second - one of the reasons why America's roads and bridges are falling apart is because they were built with Federal dollars, but no Federal provision was made for their maintenance. So what happens is that non-urban localities look at the responses to their maintenance RFPs, calculate that they would need to triple property taxes to afford it, and so decide not to do anything instead. Why would the maintenance of public toilets be any different? It's just another public expenditure. So writers like the author come up with mental gymnastics to try to find some kind of private solution that will take quarters from those who save every quarter to help them get their next fix. As if an addict would prefer a toilet to a dose. It's facetious on its face (pun intended, I guess). America isn't like this because of "culture". America is like this because of the combination of a) Congress not being able to shoulder these maintenance burdens itself (because they are the responsibility of state governments) b) state governments being both financially restrained (people are willing to pay only so much in state taxes when they already pay so much in federal taxes) and monetarily constrained (no power to print their own dollars, often constitutionally required to balance their budgets). So nobody is empowered (in the real sense of funding) to provide for the maintenance of the public commons.
- burlesona 6y ago
  This is true. It’s also true that the US system is relatively unique among western nations in being skewed in favor of rural rather than urban interests. The US has the most extensive and in many cases over-developed rural infrastructure in the world, and that creates an enormous maintenance and funding drain compared to many nations that invest principally in their major cities and not so much in their rural hinterlands. Perhaps the most extreme counter-example being Singapore which has no rural hinterlands.
  - LaundroMat 6y ago
    It's of another scale,but Belgium (especially Flanders) has the same problem. The political party that was in power for a long time favourited rural areas (because that's where the voters were). I guess the same applies to the US with the Republican party?
deleted 6y ago
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RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
The thing that makes me pessimistic about anything free, is seeing chewing gum in the urinals. It’s obvious the gum can’t go down the drain. It’s also obvious that someone will have to take out the urine soaked gum and put it in the garbage. There is a trash can literally 5 feet away. But I still find chewing gum in the urinals. If we as a culture can’t collectively get that right, I have doubts for anything more involved.
- HKH2 6y ago
  If we've moved from talking about cigarette butts to chewing gum then we've made a lot of progress.
- tekromancr 6y ago
  It's almost like venerating selfishness and calling it individuality is a recipe for a society that malfunctions in some pretty key ways.
imgabe 6y ago
I live in Hong Kong now and coming from the US the ubiquity of public toilets never ceases to amaze me. They're everywhere, free, and relatively clean. Hong Kong does seem to have an abundance of "make work" government jobs for people to go around cleaning things. I'm not sure why this is so difficult to implement in the US. A US solution I've heard somewhere that I think would work is that they city government should simply pay businesses to make a toilet publicly available. Make it a tax deduction enough to hire one extra employee on the condition that they have a toilet that is for the public to use without needing a key or password or whatever song and dance they make you do to use the bathroom. The stores and restaurants all have toilets they're maintaining anyway.
- airhead969 6y ago
  Los Angeles, as an example, has countless "no public restroom" and "restroom for customers only" signs because it's an exclusionary class thing that "those people" don't deserve to fulfill biological needs. I suggest they throw their excrement at such signs until they give in.
WuTangCFO 6y ago
What fascinates me about the yanks is that they can conjure $2.13 billion per Stealth bomber and yet a toilet is too expensive.
- danaliv 6y ago
  Never underestimate our fascination with blowing shit up, nor our penchant for making sure the "wrong" people don't get access to things.
Octopodes 6y ago
This article is absurd. I can't help but be reminded of the story about the libertarian police department: https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/7iqxko/libertarian_police_department/ https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/7iqxko/libertari...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ggm 6y ago

I live in an economy with ubiquitous free toilets and they do not all descend to the unbearable. Socialised maintenance of the commons takes many forms. Only a reductionist believes the absence of paid toilets reduces toilets to the unspeakably bad. I concede the best toilets are free, but gatekept by transactional relationships of higher worth. The razors I steal from Singapore Airlines majestic marble temples in changi are both put out for me to steal and funded from my frequent flyer value. But, the toilets by the bayside I use when I go for fish and chips by the jetty are not, they are kept clean because we want that, to maximise utility for chip eaters. Sure, it's a "tax" -so what? You want it to devolve to a 50c charge and beggars shit in bags? Screw you.

Macha 6y ago
Yeah, I recall one mall in my home town had a pay toilet, which was the only well known pay toilet in the city. So everyone used the toilet in burger king, which was free and more conveniently placed than the mall's own toilets anyway. Plenty of other free toilets, both business run and government run.
jdminhbg 6y ago
> I concede the best toilets are free, but gatekept by transactional relationships of higher worth. That's not free in any useful sense of the word. A 5 star hotel doesn't charge extra to use the very nice toilet in your room, but it's not free.
- ggm 6y ago
  Absolutely not, but in like sense, nothing is free. The dirty public toilets are free because of an externality: your gastro-enteritis costs you time and money, but the toilet owner doesn't care. Or, if its New Zealand, the bag of poo you tossed out the window of the car, is somebody else's problem. (I mention this, because lack of public toilets near hiking grounds, and a larger than normal population of backpackers in vans, living the good life, has lead to a surge of people flinging poo-bags into the wilds. People never cease to amaze me: come to the shire, visit the lord of the rings, see the mighty mountains, fling a bag of poo at it) The free public toilet in New zealand Designed by Hundertwasser is perhaps my favourite example of what you can get, if you stop obsessing about cost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundertwasser_Toilets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundertwasser_Toilets Singapore Airlines never said "we have the best toilets with amazing schmick razors to take as schwag" -it wasn't on the brochure when I got gold class. No, its not free. Overall none of the airport toilets are free, its assumed you bought rights to be inside the airport secured zone. But the basic toilets in Changi, are streets ahead of many other economies, and are not unusual: Public amenity in Singapore is really clean, and really well maintained. Only a reductionist would argue New Yorks toilet problem stems from a lack of paid toilets.
airhead969 6y ago
Yep. It's the capitalist mindset that disregards privilege and the suffering of the homeless because it's more expedient to scapegoat them in the name of a false dichotomy: "progress" and "ruin."

toothrot 6y ago

The author clearly has never cleaned toilets for a living, yet waxes philosophical, completely missing the point on why public services are kneecapped in this country.

omegaworks 6y ago
Public services are kneecapped in this country because non-white people use them. Same reason why we defunded public universities (imposing the student loan system) just as agitation was enabling women and people of color equal access.
- seibelj 6y ago
  I don’t like public services because every time I have ever used public services, even extremely (excessively) overfunded ones in liberal coastal US cities, they have had mediocre to extremely shitty quality from the perspective of the consumer. Services aren’t supposed to be jobs programs. I like privatization as a rule. It has nothing to do with racism, it has to do with an intense dislike of being fleeced by politicians.
  - majormajor 6y ago
    I've seen plenty of shitty (sorry!) privatized toilets at various events and locations. They are rarely directly "paid" - more like the event holder rents them and provides them free of charge - but the privatization aspect hasn't guaranteed me some magical clean toilet experience. Sometimes us Americans just reveal ourselves to be selfish and... again... shitty.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Services aren’t supposed to be jobs programs. Maybe they should be. What's more demeaning, being told you're not good enough for any jobs so we'll pay you to stay out of the way, or being told you're not good enough for any other jobs but here's a job that still needs to be done and you can do it?

analog31 6y ago

I was in a country that had pay toilets. What I observed during my trip was that every town had that one place where the coin mechanism just happened to be jammed, and the turnstile would give way with just a little push. I tended to pay anyway, but it seemed to be a practical solution. And that toilet tended to be a bit more dirty, probably because it was more crowded but cleaned on the same schedule as the rest. The free toilets at freeway rest areas in my state are just fine.

whatastory 6y ago

I don't want to seem too accusatory, but this just felt like an angry rant without much research. I've been to a few places on this earth, and while I know there are some Europeans who'll proudly talk about how paying for toilets helps keep them clean, I haven't noticed them being any better than gas station bathrooms in the US. Some are okay, some are total disaster sites. The only difference is someone or a machine standing at the door taking your money. Meanwhile, in East Asia, I've never encountered a pay toilet. I've also really only encountered truly dirty toilets in the middle of very remote parks. Japan, Taiwan, and Korea all have excellent free toilets. Even China does pretty decently. Parks and urban areas across the country have toilets that are well maintained, and I noticed public bathrooms even in the middle of residential areas around Beijing that were hosed down a few times a day. So no, I don't agree that the only way to fix things is to revert to literal nickel and diming. Learn from the countries that manage their systems better instead of giving up and saying it's impossible.

cwwc 6y ago
Yes, the toilets in Taiwan are great —- and free. They have masses of public toilets in park, along with cleaning attendants. But here is the rub —- in the US, they would be overrun with homeless (I’m not saying this is bad; just that it would be the reality) while in TW the people who are attending to them would likely be homeless were they in the US. Is part of this cultural? Yep, probably. Is part of it structural? I think so —- because there are roles for people in TW, the “lowest rung” of society, while the only role stateside is along the side of the road or perhaps a MCD worker.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  What are those roles in in TW? McD employees, for all their troubles, are well above "pooping in the park" in economic comfort.
  - mc32 6y ago
    The lowest rung there are the recyclers. They pick up recyclable trash (kind of like the trash bin ladies do in SF but unlike SF don't leave a strewn mess). They rummage through dumpsters looking for recyclable items, take them to places which can recycle them for pennies, but it's enough to survive. It's kind of like if you had people redeeming bottles and cans and lived in section-8 housing. But these people are going around in third hand bikes pulling hand fashioned carts, sometimes the carts are human driven if they don't have a bike. The big difference is there is no shame in being a recycling collector, but there is shame in being a burden to society.

Macha 6y ago

Has someone gone and bulk downvoted everyone that disagrees with the premise that toilets must be paid? It seems every comment is at 0 or negative

cwwc 6y ago
Weird, it seems so.
- GoOnThenDoTell 6y ago
  Not weird The silent majority just wants to do their number 2 with minimum hassle
  - konjin 6y ago
    Or a vocal minority cares a lot more about inserting capitalism everywhere, even when there are plenty of examples of places where toilets work fine without being paid.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

kgermino 6y ago

I’ve always felt that the advantage of pay toilets wasn’t that they were clean, it was that they exist. Walking around an American city trying to find a restroom can be extremely challenging, while in European cities I could almost always find a sign and a public restroom in short order (even outside the more touristy areas). I don’t know if there are actually more public toilets in those cities - or if the culture just includes more prominent signage - but remembering to carry change is way better than going shop to shop begging to use the toilet.

alisonkisk 6y ago
What's wrong with asking to use a toilet? Is it so wrong to be part of a civilized society? Along the lines of OP, my free market solution is to keep pooping in the street until the chamber of commerce decides building a restroom is good for business.
- bshep 6y ago
  Nothing wrong with asking. I think the person was trying to say that places wont let you use their toilets even if you ask.
riantogo 6y ago
My experience has be exactly the opposite. Never struggled to find a toilet in the US. In Europe, as a tourist, no public toilets and shops display prominent sign that it is for customers only. So often I had to buy $8 coke (served flat with half an ice-cube) for the privilege to use a toilet in the basement with space no bigger than the pot itself (and the pot has no toilet seat). Just sharing a counter experience.
- dheera 6y ago
  > Never struggled to find a toilet in the US. On the east coast I've been able to find toilets just fine, especially with the wealth of subway stations and indoor malls and other places that typically have restrooms. California is a hell hole though. You can walk miles across town and find zero restrooms, sometimes an occasional locked restroom, and maybe some restaurants and coffee shops whose restrooms are almost always for "customers only". It's a pity because the weather here is great for long walks. You can pee in random bushes I guess (?) but there's no place to poo.

conradev 6y ago

San Francisco's 25 public toilets don't cost anything to use, but they make quite a lot in advertising revenue: https://missionlocal.org/2019/02/how-san-francisco-flushed-away-scores-of-millions-of-dollars-on-a-wretched-toilet-contract/ https://missionlocal.org/2019/02/how-san-francisco-flushed-a... (Unfortunately, the city doesn't see much of that)

CaptainZapp 6y ago
25 public toilets in all of San Francisco? And that's with a population density of 18,790.74/sq mi[1] Compare that to Zurich (city proper) with 322 public toilets[2] and a population density of 12,000/sq mi[3] I'm not surprised that people shit on the streets if they can't find a loo. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco [2] https://pee.place/en/l/Switzerland/Zurich-Canton https://pee.place/en/l/Switzerland/Zurich-Canton [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%BCrich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%BCrich

elihu 6y ago

> Kristof and the Times, of course, would prefer a national infrastructure project to provide free toilets. If you've followed this over the years, you will see many efforts at government provided toilets. Costs are often hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the effort falls apart. There are some free toilets. In Chicago, the park district still had some. Without the incentive to charge a bit of money, they were typically disgusting and dangerous. Most cities and towns already have a large number of free toilets in parks and businesses. Some are privately owned and maintained, some are publicly owned and maintained. There just aren't enough of them (in most US cities). This is clearly a problem that can be solved with a little planning and adequate funding. And realistically, a root of the cost problem is that one could expect that about 90% of the costs are created by 1% of the users. Bathrooms aren't expensive to operate as long as people don't make a mess. I find it surprising that even working a tech industry job in a building complex populated by generally competent, responsible adults that there are almost always paper towels on the floor of the bathroom. I can understand once in awhile maybe dropping one, or not noticing that it didn't make its way into the waste basket. Or a person with joint or mobility issues might not be able to reach down and pick it up. But still, it's a continuous thing. Why? Ideally we'd find a way to alter the average person's behavior not to make a mess in the bathroom, but that's easier said than done. I don't know what the right policies there would be that aren't overly intrusive.

whiddershins 6y ago
‘ This is clearly a problem that can be solved with a little planning and adequate funding. ‘ That’s not true when costs can escalate to any amount. Which they can, and do. Regularly. With governmental projects.
- elihu 6y ago
  Sure that could happen. But it doesn't have to. We already have a lot of public infrastructure: schools, roads, government buildings, parks, and so on. Some of those projects are managed well, and some aren't. Either way, we put up with it because on average the benefits of those things outweigh the costs. Public restrooms aren't fundamentally different from all the other forms of public infrastructure we already have.

GhostVII 6y ago

I feel like at the very least we could have some super basic open air toilets. No toilet paper, no roof, just a toilet with running water and a tap. Almost no maintenance, and people won't camp out inside, but objectively better than a tree or something. I suppose the lack of TP would be more ok for men than women though.

SamBam 6y ago

> One of the top 10 principles of economics is, don't silence prices in order to transfer incomes. My Google-fu can't find this dictum anywhere. Is it usually said in some other form?

willdearden 6y ago
Probably comes from the first and second theorems of welfare economics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfare_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfar...

Arn_Thor 6y ago

The author ignores or dismisses the many countries and cities in which publicly funded public toilets work very well. The problem with public services applied in the US is that it's often done piecemeal, and a lot of things only work when implemented and funded at scale. This is nothing but an ideological screed, without any substance.

zxcvbn4038 6y ago

I grew up in a city where every habitable structure had to have separate indoor functional toilets. Roach closets in the back of the building weren’t acceptable, shared bathrooms didn’t cut it, always out of order or bombed out toilets were not allowed, customers only was not allowed. So I was in for a shock just about everywhere else in the world. Make that everywhere else in America - a toilet in France might just be a hole in the floor, but at least it’s a clean hole in the floor. The toilets in New York City are horrific. Imagine trying to go to the bathroom in an airplane - an American airline not a fancy sovereign airline - except every surface is covered with standing fluids, the walls are alive, the lights are dim, there is no toilet paper, and there is always guy standing behind you that thinks a broken lock means you are looking for anonymous bathroom sex. That is assuming that the establishment has a public restroom, and you’ve made a purchase, and there isn’t a homeless guy with a Cosmo magazine occupying the only toilet for hours. Then on top of that imagine you have your young son or daughter with you and your trying to let them go to the bathroom or go to the bathroom yourself with letting them touch any surface or their clothing absorb any of the mysterious standing liquids. The bathroom scene from Poultrygeist captures it perfectly (very NSFW) https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2x2cz7 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2x2cz7 The toilets at LaGuardia airport will also greet you with a loud piercing siren if you sit for more then thirty seconds. That’s a really jerk move so I decided to see how long that siren would go, they shut off after approx twenty minutes. People always make fun of truck stop bathrooms but coming from NYC they are always a step up - clean, dry, vermin free, well lit, changing tables, soap, toilet paper, locks on the door, and I’ve yet to be propositioned in any of the truck stop bathrooms.

Macha 6y ago
The bit that always bothers me about US toilets is how poor the privacy is. The cubicle door is like 1m high and raised nearly 40cm off the floor, and often poorly fits on the frame. I'm told it's for ease of cleaning but we accomplish that with raising them only 10cm here and extending enough for at least a standing adult. That's not to say we don't have crappy stalls here, but they seem the norm in the US and the exception at home
- zxcvbn4038 6y ago

jdeibele 6y ago

A lot of travelers swear by McDonalds near the highways. The restrooms are clean and I've never had an issue with using them before paying. Unlike the city, where the signs are either "no public restroom" or "restroom are for paying customers only". In Portland there are a variety of restrooms built by the city but they're almost all permanently closed. Too many drug deals, drug use, sex acts, etc. The city government likes to bill Portland as "the city that works" and has spent several million dollars on automated toilets much like the one described in the article. Recently the city has put a bunch of portable toilets in neighbhorhoods so that the homeless have access. Neighbors seem mostly tolerant if not happy about it. At first there were reports of a few of them being tipped over but I haven't heard much about it recently. The portables aren't attractive but it's one way of handling the need.

jdlshore 6y ago
The Portland Loo [1] is neither automated nor millions of dollars. They're $96,000 each, and 16 have been installed, for a total of $1.5 million. So either you're talking about something else or your information is incorrect. I wouldn't be surprised if they're all shut down now, due to Covid, but prior to that, they've always been open when I tried them. The other public toilets in Portland, that I'm aware of, are in the parks. They're typically in heavy brick buildings. I could see those costing millions in aggregate, but they also seem likely fairly standard "build it to last" park construction. They're not automated either. As relatively large brick buildings, I would expect them to be expensive. Regarding the point of the article—I much prefer toilets in the US to toilets in Europe. I remember trying to find a toilet at a mall in Norway and being out of luck due to not having the appropriate coin in the local currency. That's not something that would happen in the US. (Although, when I finally got in, it was quite nice.) Another pay toilet, at a train station, was worse than disgusting. I don't know who got my coin, but that was the only deposit I made... I couldn't stand to enter the place. In general, I'm much more confident in my ability to find a spot to do my business in the US than in Europe. Maybe because I expect to be able to swan into any coffee shop, gas station, or fast food chain (as you mentioned) and use the facilities. Although I'll admit that the bathrooms in Europe do tend to be nicer, on average, and I particularly appreciate the floor-to-ceiling dividers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Loo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Loo Edit: Apparently, only 15 Portland Loos have been installed in Portland, and the city has received $362,323 in royalty payments for the design, for a net outlay of just over $1 million.

adolph 6y ago

So Cochrane claims that toilet “attendant” work is “well suited to new immigrants.” Really? The rational for the claim is that immigrants “don't speak English, are not well attuned to American culture, and have little education or training.” Really? I don’t disagree with the overall point about public potty markets but there is something off putting about claiming that “dirty” jobs are for people without skills and that immigrants are a class of people without skills when the larger portion of those I see are highly accomplished people who are chronically undervalued.

bekindandopen 6y ago
That could make a great comedy sketch. A posh-speaking student on walkabout takes a temp job explaining public toilets to urban Australian pedestrians. A few iterations later, and I still find myself trying to think of ways to make the premise less offensive...live comedy must be ridiculously difficult these days.
- adolph 6y ago
  It could make for solid comedy. I'm thinking something about the ick factor about assisting someone void, like an elderly person or a person with a movement disorder, as revulsion humor with a growing dawn of the human feeling that eventually we all become frail or incapable (if we are fortunate to live long enough, or survive an accident, or survive a life being born with an ability different), and that by serving others all benefit.
konjin 6y ago
How many people who clean toilets do you know?
- adolph 6y ago
  Other than myself and other folks who have been in that line of work none.

WuTangCFO 6y ago

I have lived in London, NZ, Australia. All have had free toilets. Why? Growing up in NZ free bathrooms were normal so we take it for granted. Yes, a small population means that these facilities were less likely to be abused. But London? In Shoreditch, a part of East London that is full of pubs and hipsters quaffing the Devil's Dandruff the council sets up urinals in the street where any punter can see you pissing but only your back (it's an Octagonal urinal and you face a wall). This was a fantastic solution to an ancient problem. This may offend the yanks God-fearing sensibilities but surely a step up from seeing the perps member out in full view. The open nature of this urinal also means people are less likely to rob, kill or shag you. Surely one of you lads could bring the weeze trough to SF and make a bundle? A ye entrepreneurs or no?

floren 6y ago
Certainly not a new thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pissoir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pissoir It will not be implemented in SF because it's only suitable for men. Switzerland appears to have created a solution for women by providing disposable paper "funnels" so the ladies can use it too, but because people lack any decency they would all be stolen within minutes in SF--and if you think creating a male-only public urinal won't fly in SF, just wait until you propose that the women should have to put in a quarter to get a funnel that the men don't need :)
- WuTangCFO 6y ago
  Thank you for the link. I enjoyed the historical photos! At Glastonbury music festival, the ladies call these funnels "she wees". Bring back the pissoir!
- airhead969 6y ago
  Belgium towns often have these out for festivals and other events. Shaped like an X about 1.5 to 2m high and about 2 x 2m with a yellow hose draining to the nearest sewer. If they didn't, dudes would just pee wherever. I bet that women are out-of-luck and just go somewhere discreet.
airhead969 6y ago

patio11 6y ago

This is always a fun thing to explain to people at home in Tokyo. "Oh wow this office building put the toilet outside the security cordon." "What." "Well the guard checking badges is there and the toilet is outside that, so, well, that would never happen [in a big city in US]." "... Do you think the valuable things in this building are stored... in the toilet?" "Ah, no, that's not the nature of the problem." "What is..." "... It's complicated." "How complicated can it be?" "It's actually not complicated but more of a taboo to acknowledge."

draw_down 6y ago
So funny that we all just blithely assume people of other cultures are insane idiots for not doing what we do.
tkgally 6y ago
In addition to the economic, political, and social factors discussed elsewhere in these comments, the notion of “taboo” also, I think, helps to explain the difference between the availability of public toilets in the U.S. and in Japan (and maybe other Asian countries). Nicholas Kristof’s column has a kind of “taboo-breaking” undertone, as if he is aware that he is writing about a subject that would normally not be mentioned in the New York Times. And, in fact, I don’t recall seeing similar articles more than a few times before in nearly six decades of reading mainstream U.S. print media. In contrast, in Japan, where I’ve been reading mainstream newspapers for nearly four decades, the topic is not taboo at all, and it’s not unusual to see articles about public toilets and related matters. A search at Google News in Japanese now finds recent articles (some paywalled, all in Japanese) about a survey of public toilets in Okayama City [1], a move to build more Western-style public toilets in Matsumoto City [2], a video released by Chiba Prefecture to promote better manners by users of public toilets [3], installation of a self-cleaning toilet in a park in Kamiamakusa City [4], and (timed to the tenth anniversary of the Fukushima disaster) local governments preparing emergency toilets for future disasters [5]. Most of these articles seem to be based on press releases from local governments. [1] https://www.sanyonews.jp/article/1107034 https://www.sanyonews.jp/article/1107034 [2] https://www.shimintimes.co.jp/news/2021/03/post-12877.php https://www.shimintimes.co.jp/news/2021/03/post-12877.php [3] https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOFB168BZ0W1A210C2000000/ https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOFB168BZ0W1A210C2000000/ [4] https://kumanichi.com/news/id128124 https://kumanichi.com/news/id128124 [5] https://www.niigata-nippo.co.jp/news/politics/20210309603080.html https://www.niigata-nippo.co.jp/news/politics/20210309603080...

sidpatil 6y ago

One example of a interesting model I haven't seen mentioned in the article or comments/discussion is the toilets at Bryant Park in NYC. They're publically accessible, maintained regularly, and staffed with attendants, but is paid for with private funds.

jimkleiber 6y ago

I said if I ever run for public office in the US, one of the first items on my agenda would be public toilets. In most cities, there aren't even paid public toilets, one has to rely on the goodness (and business interest) of Starbucks and the like. I think there are all sorts of downsides to not having public toilets besides the obvious of people using the street for a toilet. The stress people have by having to hold it in, the hesitation to drink too much water and therefore dehydration of people, etc. I think government should cater to some of the most basic needs of humans and I believe a sanctioned and sanitary place to relieve oneself should be high on that list.

Noumenon72 6y ago

For this American, free toilets were a triumph of socialism. I have never had to pay for a toilet in my life. (At the age of 25 I was refused the use of a toilet in a Chicago storefront, and I was shocked.) Most companies and governments keep their toilets cleaner than my own bathroom. Just don't live in the big, overcrowded cities, and stop voting for immigration to overfill the ones that still work.

wyattpeak 6y ago

I live in Australia, and we do have a few public toilets, but honestly 90% of the time if I need one when I'm out I'll use one in a food court or a department store or some other private enterprise which seems to have a financial incentive to provide good quality amenities.* Does this not happen in the US? And if not, can anyone muse as to why? I would figure that the incentives would be the same. * I expect that there's a legal requirement for many of these businesses to provide toilets, but the level to which they maintain them is without doubt over and above any requirement of law, certainly better than any public facilities.

baron816 6y ago

The Left keeps referring to things as a “human right” (housing is a human right, healthcare is a human right, etc.). I don’t totally disagree, but they mean that if something is a human right, then the government should provide it to everyone. The case for government providing healthcare to everyone is much stronger than it providing housing for everyone. Why? Because humans are much better at making decisions about where to live than about their medical treatment. That’s it. Rights are irrelevant.

Jochim 6y ago
A government option doesn't mean that it's the only option. No one suggesting the government provide housing is suggesting that it becomes the only provider of housing. One of the primary goals is to ensure a good supply of at cost housing stock that can give renters some security and act as a controlling factor on private rents and house prices. The UK sold off much of it's public housing stock after the 1980s. The scheme was billed as a way to get poor families onto the property ladder but many of the homes were "resold" the same day to private landlords. The result is that housing is now massively unaffordable except for the highest earners and landlords. Private landlords drive up buying prices to the point that individuals cannot afford the deposit because they can extract the cost of the mortgage + profit in rent, the higher rents then make it more difficult for the individual to save the required deposit and the cycle repeats.

u678u 6y ago

The USA has a reputation for free markets it isn't really true. Pay Toilets were banned in the 70s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_toilet#U.S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_toilet#U.S.

solatic 6y ago

> The problems of public infrastructure are not money. The problems of American public infrastructure are exactly money, which is to say, the differences in funding capital projects versus funding maintenance. Forget public toilets for a second - one of the reasons why America's roads and bridges are falling apart is because they were built with Federal dollars, but no Federal provision was made for their maintenance. So what happens is that non-urban localities look at the responses to their maintenance RFPs, calculate that they would need to triple property taxes to afford it, and so decide not to do anything instead. Why would the maintenance of public toilets be any different? It's just another public expenditure. So writers like the author come up with mental gymnastics to try to find some kind of private solution that will take quarters from those who save every quarter to help them get their next fix. As if an addict would prefer a toilet to a dose. It's facetious on its face (pun intended, I guess). America isn't like this because of "culture". America is like this because of the combination of a) Congress not being able to shoulder these maintenance burdens itself (because they are the responsibility of state governments) b) state governments being both financially restrained (people are willing to pay only so much in state taxes when they already pay so much in federal taxes) and monetarily constrained (no power to print their own dollars, often constitutionally required to balance their budgets). So nobody is empowered (in the real sense of funding) to provide for the maintenance of the public commons.

burlesona 6y ago
This is true. It’s also true that the US system is relatively unique among western nations in being skewed in favor of rural rather than urban interests. The US has the most extensive and in many cases over-developed rural infrastructure in the world, and that creates an enormous maintenance and funding drain compared to many nations that invest principally in their major cities and not so much in their rural hinterlands. Perhaps the most extreme counter-example being Singapore which has no rural hinterlands.
- LaundroMat 6y ago
  It's of another scale,but Belgium (especially Flanders) has the same problem. The political party that was in power for a long time favourited rural areas (because that's where the voters were). I guess the same applies to the US with the Republican party?

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RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

The thing that makes me pessimistic about anything free, is seeing chewing gum in the urinals. It’s obvious the gum can’t go down the drain. It’s also obvious that someone will have to take out the urine soaked gum and put it in the garbage. There is a trash can literally 5 feet away. But I still find chewing gum in the urinals. If we as a culture can’t collectively get that right, I have doubts for anything more involved.

HKH2 6y ago
If we've moved from talking about cigarette butts to chewing gum then we've made a lot of progress.
tekromancr 6y ago
It's almost like venerating selfishness and calling it individuality is a recipe for a society that malfunctions in some pretty key ways.

imgabe 6y ago

I live in Hong Kong now and coming from the US the ubiquity of public toilets never ceases to amaze me. They're everywhere, free, and relatively clean. Hong Kong does seem to have an abundance of "make work" government jobs for people to go around cleaning things. I'm not sure why this is so difficult to implement in the US. A US solution I've heard somewhere that I think would work is that they city government should simply pay businesses to make a toilet publicly available. Make it a tax deduction enough to hire one extra employee on the condition that they have a toilet that is for the public to use without needing a key or password or whatever song and dance they make you do to use the bathroom. The stores and restaurants all have toilets they're maintaining anyway.

airhead969 6y ago
Los Angeles, as an example, has countless "no public restroom" and "restroom for customers only" signs because it's an exclusionary class thing that "those people" don't deserve to fulfill biological needs. I suggest they throw their excrement at such signs until they give in.

WuTangCFO 6y ago

What fascinates me about the yanks is that they can conjure $2.13 billion per Stealth bomber and yet a toilet is too expensive.

danaliv 6y ago
Never underestimate our fascination with blowing shit up, nor our penchant for making sure the "wrong" people don't get access to things.

Octopodes 6y ago

This article is absurd. I can't help but be reminded of the story about the libertarian police department: https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/7iqxko/libertarian_police_department/ https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/7iqxko/libertari...

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