Pay Toilets
Why don’t we have more pay toilets? Especially here in New York City?
When I was in France recently (“oh, here he goes”) I was at a train station that had these pay toilets and I quickly became a fan. The following is a numeric list of why I became a fan.
1. They are cheap-ish. Fifty cents. Or fifty euro-cents. Or fifty Celsius.
2. At least in this particular train station bathroom, the ‘stalls’ were more like little rooms. Perfect for traveling. I realized that I could have rolled in all of my luggage and there would still have been a lot of room and I could have easily changed clothes without any issue - very handy. Also, I could have had a small dance party in there.
3. Because you are paying money for it, there were little ladies (who were quite friendly) cleaning up the place. As soon as someone left a stall, they were in there with their sprays and paper towels.
No!
"Bathrooms in public spaces should be free!"
So, yes, there is some wacky American tradition (and/or law?) that everywhere has to have a public bathroom. That’s lovely and all fine; er, well, not really. Actually, public bathrooms are not lovely and are not fine.
Do I want all bathrooms to be pay-toilets? Probably not. Restrooms in state parks in the middle of nowhere should probably stay free and filthy. But elsewhere, why not?
Or why not give people the option? You can pay .50 and use the pay/attendant one or wait in line for the stinky public one.
Clean
The bottom line, really, is that the few I ran into were spotlessly clean.
NYC Especially
Seeing herds of tourists queuing up at the Starbucks to use their crazy bathrooms always brings me down. If the city opened 5 or 6 pay toilets in major tourist areas, they would pay for themselves I bet. Yes?
Robots
Allegedly, we have a few of those robot toilets in the city. Somewhere. You know, those are the ones that are a bigger, shinier port-a-potty and you insert your coins and it gives you a certain amount of time and then it cleans itself. The issue there is that those robot toilets must cost a ton of money to produce and to maintain. I bet they go out of service all the time.
Pay Toilets
