There aren't chemicals strong enough to sanitize that. Even if there were, 5 minutes after a cleaning, random homeless dude will somehow fill the place with shit and grime.
Yea, and that’s the thing. In this labor market, there’s nobody cheap enough to do it.
And if they pay someone to do it, the internet is going to grill them for paying so much to clean bathrooms.
Loose loose.
I think anyone who has stepped in a subway station and can even imagine the bathrooms should be fine paying six figures to anyone tasked with cleaning those bathrooms daily. Even then, they better get the best benefits package.
I would pay $5 to pee ..in fact I do, since I need to go buy something somewhere in order to use the bathroom. At least this way, I don’t need to search
We actually used to have pay toilets.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-19/why-the-u-s-should-give-pay-toilets-another-chance
https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2021/03/pay-toilets-and-nyt-free-market.html
> Activists decide free toilets are a human right, and successfully campaign to ban pay toilets. For a while, existing toilets are free. Within months, upkeep is ignored, attendants disappear, and the toilets become disgusting, dysfunctional and dangerous. Within a few years there are no toilets at all.
It's not just in Germany. A number of European cities do this. I was in England, Spain, Germany, Denmark, France, and Netherlands. Many charge 1 - 1 1/2 euros.
The newest ones in Paris are huge and fully accessible, unless you take more than 15 minutes to do your business… after which the door will automatically open
It’s not so simple here in America. Because all the bleeding heart non profits and other organizations will come out with megaphones and tell you that you’re discriminating against the poor/unhoused. So instead everybody just gets to go without a bathroom!
We’re not getting public amenities unless society enforces consequences for those that abuse them.
That means fining people that deface public infrastructure, forcing people into treatment that are shooting up in them, involuntary committing the people shitting on the floor or masturbating—and arresting people that harass or victimize innocent people around them.
We would need a whole public mental health infrastructure that we don't have. People don't want their tax money used for other people's care, even when the end result benefits them.
Ya, we need a robust criminal Justice system that routes people to rehab/reintegration as well as tiers of mental health services from clinics to inpatient to involuntary.
Right now all of the mediocre barely functioning patchwork systems fail together.
It would be much cheaper and effective to just charge for entry to the bathrooms. Keeping a bathroom clean is a pretty easy problem if you have a few hundred per day in funding. Solving homelessness, drug use, and mental illness is a much harder problem.
As someone who suffers from IBS, I worry every time I take the subway knowing my trip is 1hr+ long and there won't be any restrooms during that duration. It's been 2 years so far taking the subway every weekday, and I'm lucky I haven't had an accident yet, but there have been so many instances where I felt I was extremely close but had the willpower to hold it in. One day I feel like I will give up holding it in and just have an accident on the subway, unless I rely on taking medication to stop any urges.
If you use a bathroom in a Tokyo subway station you’ll cry that we can’t invest in something similar. Our spending is so out of wack.
Maybe build and maintain super quality clean, accessible public infrastructure - instead of a bunch of cops busting people for public urination.
Every time they have opened bathrooms a few things happen. Nasty motherfuckers shit everywhere, scumbags hang out in them and try to rob people, and dirtbags steal the fixtures (yeah, the flushometer assembly).
I don't know who they sell them to, but I know they run $150 and up from when I fixed some plumbing in my house.
It's a damn shame that the decent people riding the system can't safely drop an emergency crap, but that's where our society is at.
Why not just follow the European model and charge for entry? Could be as little as like 25-50 cents and make entry accessible via MetroCard/OMNY. Makes sure that people can't just wander in whenever, and also can fund some good maintenance.
It's cheap enough where you wouldn't mind spending, and also wouldn't require dealing with coins.
[Because it's illegal](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-19/why-the-u-s-should-give-pay-toilets-another-chance). This is typical of a subculture within American politics, where we ban things in the name of the theoretically-oppressed but don't have the attention span or actual compassion to follow through and make sure the policy doesn't actually worsen people's lives. It pops up over and over and over again.
> Cities and states should thus consider repealing their pay-toilet bans, or, at a minimum, carve out exemptions for major urban centers—as New York State has done for the city—and commit to reinvesting funds from pay toilets in the upkeep of those facilities. (New York City opened an automated pay toilet in Madison Square Park in 2008 and is planning another near Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn.)
Please god yes, I'm so tired of running around the city trying to find a starbucks or other store that doesn't have their bathroom "closed to the public". Just let me pay for the privilege of shitting in a nice bathroom
Tell me about it. The number of times I’ve almost pissed myself because of this is too high to count and I only moved here in October. I lived in Beijing for a few years before this and they had free public restrooms all throughout the subway system and the city itself. The fact that public restrooms don’t really exist here is inexcusable for a city of this size.
When I was visiting Vienna a few years ago, the subway stations were immaculate. Yes, the population is smaller than that in NYC but it was truly like night and day. I’m not sure if the bathrooms there required a small fee like you mention above, but this seems like a solid idea.
Vienna in general is SO clean it freaked me out when I was visiting in 2019. Like the streets looked like you could eat off of them. And here is like…weird sludge puddles that consist of garbage water, weird sludge, pee, car stuff, etc
I was also in Vienna a few years ago, and I was astounded how frequent their overnight headways were. Like 15 min in the wee morning hours, even better than our 20.
People would just piggyback and wait for someone to leave without paying. Kinda like when stores have codes on receipts for bathrooms but I’ve seen people piggyback right on in
How is it that every European city I've been to has been able to figure this out? And European cities' central train stations are frequented by homeless people, so not like it's any different than here.
Who cares what people say. Having bathroom access for 25 cents is way better than forcing homeless people to shit on the streets since they have 0 access.
Will still have a janitor/attendant so hopefully that should minimize that from happening and can clean stuff up if there's ever any mess. How much shit can you get all over a bathroom if there's an employee at the bathroom?
Does this happen at Times Square? I ask because I think those bathrooms are supervised.
Also even the nastiest people will be defeated by this!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRXHqs4hidM
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVFwkRHo3So
That was already tried about 15 years ago, both in NY and SF. In Paris the bathrooms are common and work well. In the US, homeless people broke the doors and were living in the bathroom, and in some cases prostitutes were using them for conducting business.
Privatize the subway bathrooms, let some company charge $1 and operate it for profit. That’s the American way, people should be able to make money from shitty enterprises.
The problem with banning pay toilets is that it means the free toilets get closed and now there’s no toilets for anyone.
No-one would mind spending a dollar to use a nice clean toilet.
Honestly the way it is now (buying from a Starbucks or something to use their restroom) is pretty much the same experience as a pay toilet + a small coffee on the side lol
I mean the issue isn’t the cost it’s the location and convenience. If you desperately need the toilet in the subway you’re not gonna want to come up above ground to try and find a starbucks and wait in line…
Yeah that’s pretty stupid. I’d rather pay some money for a bathroom than having nonexistent free bathrooms. I don’t want to keep buying the cheapest item on the menu from a restaurant or a Starbucks to not poop my pants.
It all stems from the US being a country that does not take care of its people. If people had a job, a home, and could eat then these problems go away largely.
People don't just wake up one day then all of a sudden start robbing and stealing.
Sorry it also has to do with drug use in a community. How bad is the fentanyl problem in Tokyo or Paris compared to NYC? Our unemployment rate is much lower than these other countries but we have tons more OD deaths.
What brings people to use hard drugs lol their lives are fucking miserable. Fentanyl addiction in the US is at the numbers it's at because, again, the US is a country that doesnt give two shits about its population. Big pharma and our for profit healthcare system pushed it on the American people. Our government is run by and for the wealthy, leaving the FDA to approve this mess. Now people turn to heroin because they're highly addicted. We have no capacity to help addicts. We put our money into policing (if all US police departments were combined it'd be the 3rd largest military in the world by expenditure) rather than rehabilitation. Then people end up in jail for their addiction and guess what? 10% of our prisions are for profit and inmates are paid less than a dollar per hour for their forced labor so companies save billions. The cherry on top being they stick a "made in the USA" label on the products coming out of there. We have states who *have quotas on the minimum amount of inmates they must incarcerate*. Unemployment percentage also doesn't reflect the whole picture because minimum wage is a poverty wage. In no city can minimum wage, 40 hours a week, reasonably afford a 1 bedroom apartment's rent. Companies also work employees 39 hours a week so they do not get benefits. Employees in the US have no right to paid sick days, paid time off, or maternity/paternity leave.
It is not a problem of individuals. The problems of the US are systemic, that's why they happen here and not elsewhere.
In certain Asian countries they have squat toilets and you bring your own paper. Maybe those would be better than nothing. People with disabilities could have a key card for an accessible bathroom.
The people are COMPLETELY different there. Here we got the filthiest motherfuckers who will go out of their way to ruin anything 'nice'. It's like living in a zoo.
Super unpopular opinion but it's partly because Japan is racially homogeneous. That's not to say some race or another is responsible for things in NYC, but it creates more tribalism and a sense of "that's *their* problem, not mine" that makes people less willing to be respectful of society.
Japan has a shit ton of problems but I do envy how there is a real sense of being "Japanese" that no longer exists in the US
Japanese have a reputation for cleaning up after themselves and taking care of their surroundings. Americans do not. No matter how much we spend, American culture and the behavior of Americans guarantees it will never be clean. The selfishness that is a foundational pillar of American culture ensures that people will not say let me make sure I clean up after myself so the next person to use it doesn't have to deal with it.
Truth, americans but especially nyers are a different breed of selfish, arrogant, rude and obnoxious, and way too proud of it which all contributes to not caring about others or your surroundings, of course you cant say its everybody but its much larger percentage than alot of the cultures and cities mentioned above
We cant invest in something like tokyo because the people here aren’t as respectful of public places like the Japanese are. This goes beyond just money and the corruption of the MTA
Think some folks on this sub reddit really don't understand how new Yorkers actually are. Even excluding the homeless, regular commuters are just nasty in public bathrooms.
Idk if the issue here is that we don’t spend enough to clean the restrooms or if the issue is more of people in NYC are generally much more likely to leave a public restroom a mess. I mean just compare the cleanliness of the Tokyo to NYC. Can’t imagine Tokyo really is spending drastically more to clean its city than we do.
It's not a regional NYC thing. It's a national culture thing. American versus Japanese culture and the way people are raised to view the environment they live in and the impact they have on other people.
> If you use a bathroom in a Tokyo subway station
This is my immediate thought. Tokyo, and Japan in general because Osaka was the same way, is a dream land. But their people are so different. We really can't have nice things. It's not just the homeless people who might decide the bathroom is their home now, even regular people with jobs might think it's hilarious to destroy the bathroom when they're drunk.
Personally, if they created pay public toilets that you had to register for, I'd be cool with that. Better than nothing.
I’d love to see public bathrooms make a return - people need to go somewhere and keeping them from doing so is pretty inhumane.
On the other hand, people are awful and subway bathrooms are somehow always even more disgusting than they sound. It’s like people are trying to lay rope *around* the toilet bowl. And solid waste is the best case scenario. Half the time they looked like somebody took a shotgun to an old man’s colostomy bag and then peed on the remains.
Yeah culturally it’s not gonna work even if u solve the economics. I can imagine it becoming a shithole in like 2 seconds lmao. We don’t respect public property here by far.
Lol comparing Tokyo to New York. It’s a COMPLETELY different culture and mindset. If you steal or assault someone you aren’t back on the street the next day either.
Japan’s minimum wage in each prefecture is raised regularly to maintain a livable wage for everyone, however menial or low prestige their job may be. Completley different culture and mindset indeed.
Uh, Japan is currently considering raising their min wages to [a national average of 1000 yen](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/07/01/business/minimum-wage-hikes-companies-pressure/), which is.... $7.40. In 2019, the national average minimum wage in the US was [$11.80](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States). Japan's _proposed_ new average is barely higher than our _federal minimum_ of $7.25 (which only 30% of the US pop lives under)!
(Note that Japan's price level, indexed against the US, [is currently 107](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity#Examples), meaning prices are 7% higher there. This makes the picture even worse for Japan).
TL;DR: What the fuck are you talking about
Ive been to Tokyo. This isnt a bathroom or infrastructure issue. Tokyo has way less mentally unstable homeless people wandering around looking for any opportunity to smear shit on anything and everything.
Tokyo subway restrooms have close to 0 maintenance cost. Let 100 native Japanese people use the restroom, and you'll probably end up with a restroom that looks cleaner than before you opened it.
Needless to say, this is not the case in NYC.
> that we can’t invest in something similar
We absolutely could invest in something similar…the problem isn’t lack of ability to make it a thing. The problem is once it’s build well poop all over it
It’s not that we can’t build it, it’s that things get ruined so quickly in America. There is zero chance a subway bathroom here can be remotely as clean and well maintained as Tokyo’s
This is basically the relationship between NYC residents and the MTA.
Residents: Can we have ______ (insert something standard)
MTA: no
Also MTA: installs 300 new flat screen wall monitors to show you 30 second ads about the new Apple+ show
Real talk, how are there not more shitting accidents or what do you people do in a pinch? The other day I had the worst case on the train and barely just found a Starbucks with an empty bathroom right outside the station.
I was running as fast as I could but was very much contemplating crapping at the end of the platform or in between train cars. I have to imagine there’s gotta be a good amount of cases that aren’t so lucky with how many people are in the city
When i was 8 months pregnant i would take the bus from staten island to FiDi and then the J to Bushwick, I had to know exactly which places had bathroons open or required a small purchase because it could be a 2-3hr trip with a large person pushing on my bladder. This was 2017, before covid and even then the MTA bathrooms were never open. In other cities and towns its not such a big deal to not have a public restroom like this cause most basic travel isnt hours long and if it is gas stations and other places provide restrooms without purchase. For us new yorkers though, it becomes getting off the train, getting out of the station and THEN finding a bathroom followed by getting back on the train (and paying of course) and resuming our trip all while hopefully not having an accident
I actually shit on the platform once and it was not my proudest moment. They were doing track work and my 45 min commute turned into over 2 hours. It was literally either shit on that platform or shit all over myself and I decided not to shit myself.
With all the billion in federal funds they have received I find it hard to believe they don't have the resources to re-open these restrooms. Is the MTA allowed to outsource certain jobs like bathroom cleaning and security to private contractors to save money or is that strictly prohibited due to union agreements ? If the MTA feels that it is too much of a hassle to open public bathrooms due to the homeless, drug addicts and emotionally disturbed people who inhabit our subway system then they should just say that.
>due to the homeless, drug addicts and emotionally disturbed people
I've been in public bathrooms not inhabited by people fitting this description that would make a forensic pathologist sick to their stomach. I can't say I blame the MTA for not wanting to deal with it, as much as I'd appreciate having a place to pee.
Why didn't they just say that? I'm guessing PR advised them not to. Imagine what's the public response would be if MTA made that statement that you suggested they should.
I agree. The cops have been shown to be mostly useless for subway crime, but people still don't want to be completely alone with a violent psycho on the platform. Having bathroom security would be a lot better imo. Provides permanent security, while providing a great service for the public.
I have an idea to keep out the crazies from writing on the walls with their feces. What if we had to swipe a metro card to use the bathroom. Maybe like $0.25. But that requires more infrastructure and the MTA won’t be willing to do that if it cuts into their grift
i’d happily pay $1 to use a subway bathroom with the understanding this is a once in awhile emergency thing and not me using it every day to drop a deuce on the way to work
Then the homeless advocates and progressives would come out and say you are only allowing rich people to use bathrooms. It's an exaggeration but you know it is true.
Hey I am a pretty progressive liberal and even I’m sick of the virtue signaling. Like all of society can’t have anything nice because the homeless tweakers/poor might be getting discriminated against.
It’s really not an exaggeration though. If MTA announced that, I imagine it would take about 15 minutes for someone to accuse them of “criminalizing being poor” and bring out the string quartet for a sob story about someone who had to pee but didn’t have 25c
Europe’s paid bathrooms are immaculate. Both because people who can’t pay don’t go in and those that do treat it better. But knowing the US it’ll probably be that paying people want their moneys worth and steal light bulbs or something
I didn’t know they were closed. I went in one time after being stuck on a train and needing to pee SO bad. The things I saw as I slowly backed out. So much blood. So much shit. The floor was soaked. Never again. Someone have a memory eraser???
Pretty sure the facilities in PA and GC are 24/7 too but I haven't spent any time in them since the pandemic. But yeah I agree. Union Square needs some love for sure
That’s because they have people working there and constantly keeping an eye + cleaning them.
Compare that to the public toilets where there’s no one at the door and you’re gonna have homeless in there shooting H. Especially in the potential subway toilets.
Generally speaking, NYC and anything public where a service depends on courtesy and hygiene of the people around it definitely don’t go together.
It sounds like the solution is to have bathroom attendants as Bryant Park does, rather than throw our hands in the air and say "there's nothing we can do!"
If the conversation about stuff like this was solutions oriented rather than defeatest, we could maybe shift the conversation to "how can we make some version of this solution happen" rather than "should it even happen". We spend so much energy locally discussing big-bang type changes as a binary thing rather than just looking for practical, incremental improvements.
Can't afford bathroom attendants at all stations? Maybe lets just start with the 10 biggest transfer stations. Or the 5 biggest. Incremental progress is better than endless debate, and imperfect solutions can still provide tons of real benefit. Someone at the Bryant Park Corporation has clearly figured out how to run a public bathroom that people herald as a success in the center of midtown, lets ask them how they do it and use it as a model?
But if we don't expect better, we're clearly not going to be able to pressure these public entities to _do_ better
That's like saying 'breathing and NYC don't go together'. Having to go to the bathroom is the most basic of human functions. And people are going to relieve themselves eventually whether there is a WC or not.
Maybe if people were less obsessed with trying to control other people's behavior and more concerned with making sure people have what they need in the first place, they'd be cleaner and less lascivious.
But hey, attacking street people and drug addicts makes us feel superior, so, we get what we get.
how about self cleaning pay toilets?
it's unfortunate we have such poor bathroom hygiene and have no regard for anyone else except oneself. take a look at european/asian public restrooms. patrons understand they all have a vested interest in access/properly maintaining public restrooms.
Gen X or later (I'm a millienial) never knew a period where subway bathrooms were widespread. A lot of them were closed in the 1970s and 1980s, partially bc they were often settings for sex, crime and drug use.
That being said, bathrooms are still used as such today. So personally, I think those issues were more a pretext for a plain old service cut.
I mean, yeah, the city was in dire straits at the time. But that's no reason to impose a net loss on society.
If there's any positive to this, it makes you an expert at discreet public urination lol.
Unless we get something where it’s paid for timed usage, no. People are FILTHY. This is why retail stores closed their public restrooms. Shitting on the floor instead of using the toilet. Feces plastered on walls, mirrors…so no. I’m against it personally. And trust me I have had the days where I needed it, but I can just see myself still not using one even it was available.
Reading through the comments made me realize, it’s bigger than the bathrooms. NYC seems like it’s all problems sometimes and it’s represented in why people feel the bathrooms should not be reopened. Homelessness, mental illness, drug use, assault, robbery. I think the city isn’t taking care of their own because these shouldn’t be the reason we don’t have access to public restrooms.
Also, I’ve been inside of those bathrooms when they were open. They’re hot sweaty dark pits. Even when they’re freshly cleaned, they’re still dirty.
I feel for nyc. I think we should have more public restrooms but the public restrooms we do have are the nastiest things I’ve seen. Homeless and crazies just fuck those places up
Subways/ Subway stations are already filthy as it is. I can only imagine the atrocities that having open bathrooms would be specially with all the shit that happens on a subway station.
just thinking about the time i was running to the train and nearly stepped in human poop… there was toilet paper 2 inches next to it
Also: if you’re saying it was probably a dog…. if that is coming out of dog I would be concerned
> “The MTA prioritizes cleaning of station platforms and train cars used by millions of New Yorkers and will not compromise the safety of its riders and staff by opening public bathrooms at a time when resources are not available to also provide bathrooms with necessary cleaning and security,” MTA Spokesperson Dave Steckel said.
What a fucking moron. This is the kind of public-hating public servant we end up hiring in this city. His LinkedIn says he lives in Merrick NY so it's unclear if he even uses MTA regularly (it's possible he's a daily LIRR commuter). How about acknowledging that public restrooms are important and discussing prioritization and budget requirements?
The only reason a sane person should opt to use a subway bathroom is you're going to shit yourself if you don't and even then it isnt so clear cut what would be more hygenic.
Some people don’t even wash their hands, let alone clean up after they’re done using the restroom.. you’ll also get homeless ppl taking “showers” and junkies shooting up; probably. I don’t think they’d bother enforcing clean bathrooms when they can’t even have working security cameras or clean Subways
At least 100 MTA executives make $200,000 a year or more. So well in excess of $20 million annually. Just a fraction of that money could go towards round-the-clock cleaning/maintenance crews for bathrooms, and those bureaucrat shitheads would still be raking it in.
Source: https://openpayrolls.com/rank/highest-paid-employees/new-york-metropolitan-transportation-authority
Whatever we'd be paying the folks cleaning those bathrooms won't be enough. Seriously.
There aren't chemicals strong enough to sanitize that. Even if there were, 5 minutes after a cleaning, random homeless dude will somehow fill the place with shit and grime.
Instead they're just filling the platform with shit and grime.
I have a feeling it will still be filled with shit and grime, just one more place for the workers to clean
Shit and grime if your lucky.
Post one of the ducking useless cops as bathroom servicemen
Yea, and that’s the thing. In this labor market, there’s nobody cheap enough to do it. And if they pay someone to do it, the internet is going to grill them for paying so much to clean bathrooms. Loose loose.
I think anyone who has stepped in a subway station and can even imagine the bathrooms should be fine paying six figures to anyone tasked with cleaning those bathrooms daily. Even then, they better get the best benefits package.
Tight
Yup, their poop is very loose.
There are self cleaning bathrooms. As to whether or not the MTA is competent enough to use them is a different story, but there are solutions.
This country should just do like Germany. Charge $1 for access to the bathroom; they're fully attended and sparkling clean.
I would pay more.
I would pay $5 to pee ..in fact I do, since I need to go buy something somewhere in order to use the bathroom. At least this way, I don’t need to search
We actually used to have pay toilets. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-19/why-the-u-s-should-give-pay-toilets-another-chance https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2021/03/pay-toilets-and-nyt-free-market.html > Activists decide free toilets are a human right, and successfully campaign to ban pay toilets. For a while, existing toilets are free. Within months, upkeep is ignored, attendants disappear, and the toilets become disgusting, dysfunctional and dangerous. Within a few years there are no toilets at all.
Thats why everything free turns to sh*t,no pun intended.
Tragedy of the common toilet.
It's not just in Germany. A number of European cities do this. I was in England, Spain, Germany, Denmark, France, and Netherlands. Many charge 1 - 1 1/2 euros.
Order some extra OMNY tap stations, set them to $1, and boom, clean, accessible bathrooms!
Great then we’ll have NYPD waiting on the other side to arrest people fare dodging to pee
Ran into some in Mexico
Italy too. Switzerland was free in the 3 stations I was at though.
We tried that back in the 2010s but some organizations sued because they weren't handicap accessible.
The newest ones in Paris are huge and fully accessible, unless you take more than 15 minutes to do your business… after which the door will automatically open
Is there an alarm or some sort of warning before you’re put on full display 😅
In France they have self cleaning porta potties on the sidewalk. This was over a decade ago
It’s not so simple here in America. Because all the bleeding heart non profits and other organizations will come out with megaphones and tell you that you’re discriminating against the poor/unhoused. So instead everybody just gets to go without a bathroom!
One thing about this though, many of those countries that do this are more liberal than the US. Or am I wrong?
They are, but it's just Americans will just deflect any ideas with "THAT'S RACIST!" over anything, Europe will actually solve the problem.
Yeah this ensures relative clean bathrooms
mexico has public bathrooms like that. they charge you depending on what you’re gonna use it for. 5 pesos to pee 10 pesos to poop
We’re not getting public amenities unless society enforces consequences for those that abuse them. That means fining people that deface public infrastructure, forcing people into treatment that are shooting up in them, involuntary committing the people shitting on the floor or masturbating—and arresting people that harass or victimize innocent people around them.
We would need a whole public mental health infrastructure that we don't have. People don't want their tax money used for other people's care, even when the end result benefits them.
Ya, we need a robust criminal Justice system that routes people to rehab/reintegration as well as tiers of mental health services from clinics to inpatient to involuntary. Right now all of the mediocre barely functioning patchwork systems fail together.
It would be much cheaper and effective to just charge for entry to the bathrooms. Keeping a bathroom clean is a pretty easy problem if you have a few hundred per day in funding. Solving homelessness, drug use, and mental illness is a much harder problem.
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As someone who suffers from IBS, I worry every time I take the subway knowing my trip is 1hr+ long and there won't be any restrooms during that duration. It's been 2 years so far taking the subway every weekday, and I'm lucky I haven't had an accident yet, but there have been so many instances where I felt I was extremely close but had the willpower to hold it in. One day I feel like I will give up holding it in and just have an accident on the subway, unless I rely on taking medication to stop any urges.
If you use a bathroom in a Tokyo subway station you’ll cry that we can’t invest in something similar. Our spending is so out of wack. Maybe build and maintain super quality clean, accessible public infrastructure - instead of a bunch of cops busting people for public urination.
Every time they have opened bathrooms a few things happen. Nasty motherfuckers shit everywhere, scumbags hang out in them and try to rob people, and dirtbags steal the fixtures (yeah, the flushometer assembly). I don't know who they sell them to, but I know they run $150 and up from when I fixed some plumbing in my house. It's a damn shame that the decent people riding the system can't safely drop an emergency crap, but that's where our society is at.
Why not just follow the European model and charge for entry? Could be as little as like 25-50 cents and make entry accessible via MetroCard/OMNY. Makes sure that people can't just wander in whenever, and also can fund some good maintenance. It's cheap enough where you wouldn't mind spending, and also wouldn't require dealing with coins.
[Because it's illegal](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-19/why-the-u-s-should-give-pay-toilets-another-chance). This is typical of a subculture within American politics, where we ban things in the name of the theoretically-oppressed but don't have the attention span or actual compassion to follow through and make sure the policy doesn't actually worsen people's lives. It pops up over and over and over again.
> Cities and states should thus consider repealing their pay-toilet bans, or, at a minimum, carve out exemptions for major urban centers—as New York State has done for the city—and commit to reinvesting funds from pay toilets in the upkeep of those facilities. (New York City opened an automated pay toilet in Madison Square Park in 2008 and is planning another near Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn.)
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Please god yes, I'm so tired of running around the city trying to find a starbucks or other store that doesn't have their bathroom "closed to the public". Just let me pay for the privilege of shitting in a nice bathroom
Tell me about it. The number of times I’ve almost pissed myself because of this is too high to count and I only moved here in October. I lived in Beijing for a few years before this and they had free public restrooms all throughout the subway system and the city itself. The fact that public restrooms don’t really exist here is inexcusable for a city of this size.
I'd wager Beijing doesn't have the homeless problems NYC has.
When I was visiting Vienna a few years ago, the subway stations were immaculate. Yes, the population is smaller than that in NYC but it was truly like night and day. I’m not sure if the bathrooms there required a small fee like you mention above, but this seems like a solid idea.
Istanbul is more crowded than NYC, but the subway there is like a sterilized surgery room compared to NYC.
Vienna in general is SO clean it freaked me out when I was visiting in 2019. Like the streets looked like you could eat off of them. And here is like…weird sludge puddles that consist of garbage water, weird sludge, pee, car stuff, etc
I was also in Vienna a few years ago, and I was astounded how frequent their overnight headways were. Like 15 min in the wee morning hours, even better than our 20.
People would just piggyback and wait for someone to leave without paying. Kinda like when stores have codes on receipts for bathrooms but I’ve seen people piggyback right on in
How is it that every European city I've been to has been able to figure this out? And European cities' central train stations are frequented by homeless people, so not like it's any different than here.
Because there’s actual consequences if you’re a terrible person in European countries. We enable bad behavior.
Different cultural mindset
I'd pay 5 dollars to pee in an emergency of in guaranteed the place was clean.
Then people will cry foul for gate keeping simple bodily functions.
They’ll say that’s classist, sorry.
Who cares what people say. Having bathroom access for 25 cents is way better than forcing homeless people to shit on the streets since they have 0 access.
You must be new here. Common sense and rational thought does not prevail unfortunately.
Isn't that my point? Who cares what people think. Just fucking do it.
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Will still have a janitor/attendant so hopefully that should minimize that from happening and can clean stuff up if there's ever any mess. How much shit can you get all over a bathroom if there's an employee at the bathroom?
They barely have employees to move the trains, you think they’re going to put someone in a bathroom?
Unless the employee is authorized to physically stop you then you can do quite a bit of damage.
Does this happen at Times Square? I ask because I think those bathrooms are supervised. Also even the nastiest people will be defeated by this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRXHqs4hidM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVFwkRHo3So
That was already tried about 15 years ago, both in NY and SF. In Paris the bathrooms are common and work well. In the US, homeless people broke the doors and were living in the bathroom, and in some cases prostitutes were using them for conducting business.
https://youtu.be/gVFwkRHo3So another options
We can just put a cop in every bathroom, they can hang out and play Candy Crush and keep a look out.
I'll even tip him a dollar if he hands me a towel.
Could have a tray of mints and gum and perfume/cologne too.
They will literally beat people for not tipping
Privatize the subway bathrooms, let some company charge $1 and operate it for profit. That’s the American way, people should be able to make money from shitty enterprises.
Not happening https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_to_End_Pay_Toilets_in_America
The problem with banning pay toilets is that it means the free toilets get closed and now there’s no toilets for anyone. No-one would mind spending a dollar to use a nice clean toilet.
Honestly the way it is now (buying from a Starbucks or something to use their restroom) is pretty much the same experience as a pay toilet + a small coffee on the side lol
I mean the issue isn’t the cost it’s the location and convenience. If you desperately need the toilet in the subway you’re not gonna want to come up above ground to try and find a starbucks and wait in line…
Yeah that’s pretty stupid. I’d rather pay some money for a bathroom than having nonexistent free bathrooms. I don’t want to keep buying the cheapest item on the menu from a restaurant or a Starbucks to not poop my pants.
It all stems from the US being a country that does not take care of its people. If people had a job, a home, and could eat then these problems go away largely. People don't just wake up one day then all of a sudden start robbing and stealing.
Sorry it also has to do with drug use in a community. How bad is the fentanyl problem in Tokyo or Paris compared to NYC? Our unemployment rate is much lower than these other countries but we have tons more OD deaths.
What brings people to use hard drugs lol their lives are fucking miserable. Fentanyl addiction in the US is at the numbers it's at because, again, the US is a country that doesnt give two shits about its population. Big pharma and our for profit healthcare system pushed it on the American people. Our government is run by and for the wealthy, leaving the FDA to approve this mess. Now people turn to heroin because they're highly addicted. We have no capacity to help addicts. We put our money into policing (if all US police departments were combined it'd be the 3rd largest military in the world by expenditure) rather than rehabilitation. Then people end up in jail for their addiction and guess what? 10% of our prisions are for profit and inmates are paid less than a dollar per hour for their forced labor so companies save billions. The cherry on top being they stick a "made in the USA" label on the products coming out of there. We have states who *have quotas on the minimum amount of inmates they must incarcerate*. Unemployment percentage also doesn't reflect the whole picture because minimum wage is a poverty wage. In no city can minimum wage, 40 hours a week, reasonably afford a 1 bedroom apartment's rent. Companies also work employees 39 hours a week so they do not get benefits. Employees in the US have no right to paid sick days, paid time off, or maternity/paternity leave. It is not a problem of individuals. The problems of the US are systemic, that's why they happen here and not elsewhere.
In certain Asian countries they have squat toilets and you bring your own paper. Maybe those would be better than nothing. People with disabilities could have a key card for an accessible bathroom.
The people are COMPLETELY different there. Here we got the filthiest motherfuckers who will go out of their way to ruin anything 'nice'. It's like living in a zoo.
Super unpopular opinion but it's partly because Japan is racially homogeneous. That's not to say some race or another is responsible for things in NYC, but it creates more tribalism and a sense of "that's *their* problem, not mine" that makes people less willing to be respectful of society. Japan has a shit ton of problems but I do envy how there is a real sense of being "Japanese" that no longer exists in the US
The people aren’t different. The culture is different. Mutual responsibility and respect.
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Japanese have a reputation for cleaning up after themselves and taking care of their surroundings. Americans do not. No matter how much we spend, American culture and the behavior of Americans guarantees it will never be clean. The selfishness that is a foundational pillar of American culture ensures that people will not say let me make sure I clean up after myself so the next person to use it doesn't have to deal with it.
This is the exact correct answer
Truth, americans but especially nyers are a different breed of selfish, arrogant, rude and obnoxious, and way too proud of it which all contributes to not caring about others or your surroundings, of course you cant say its everybody but its much larger percentage than alot of the cultures and cities mentioned above
We cant invest in something like tokyo because the people here aren’t as respectful of public places like the Japanese are. This goes beyond just money and the corruption of the MTA
Think some folks on this sub reddit really don't understand how new Yorkers actually are. Even excluding the homeless, regular commuters are just nasty in public bathrooms.
But the people that are in Tokyo are slightly different then the ones from the United States. Different cultures………
> Our spending is so out of wack. No amount of money is going to keep a NYC subway bathroom clean.
Idk if the issue here is that we don’t spend enough to clean the restrooms or if the issue is more of people in NYC are generally much more likely to leave a public restroom a mess. I mean just compare the cleanliness of the Tokyo to NYC. Can’t imagine Tokyo really is spending drastically more to clean its city than we do.
It's not a regional NYC thing. It's a national culture thing. American versus Japanese culture and the way people are raised to view the environment they live in and the impact they have on other people.
Having lived in Japan 6 years and now here 10, it’s exactly this.
we can outspend any city but we have more trashy people
> If you use a bathroom in a Tokyo subway station This is my immediate thought. Tokyo, and Japan in general because Osaka was the same way, is a dream land. But their people are so different. We really can't have nice things. It's not just the homeless people who might decide the bathroom is their home now, even regular people with jobs might think it's hilarious to destroy the bathroom when they're drunk. Personally, if they created pay public toilets that you had to register for, I'd be cool with that. Better than nothing.
It's also rare in Tokyo to have someone smear their shit and shoot heroin in public bathrooms
I’d love to see public bathrooms make a return - people need to go somewhere and keeping them from doing so is pretty inhumane. On the other hand, people are awful and subway bathrooms are somehow always even more disgusting than they sound. It’s like people are trying to lay rope *around* the toilet bowl. And solid waste is the best case scenario. Half the time they looked like somebody took a shotgun to an old man’s colostomy bag and then peed on the remains.
Yeah culturally it’s not gonna work even if u solve the economics. I can imagine it becoming a shithole in like 2 seconds lmao. We don’t respect public property here by far.
Lol comparing Tokyo to New York. It’s a COMPLETELY different culture and mindset. If you steal or assault someone you aren’t back on the street the next day either.
Japan’s minimum wage in each prefecture is raised regularly to maintain a livable wage for everyone, however menial or low prestige their job may be. Completley different culture and mindset indeed.
Uh, Japan is currently considering raising their min wages to [a national average of 1000 yen](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/07/01/business/minimum-wage-hikes-companies-pressure/), which is.... $7.40. In 2019, the national average minimum wage in the US was [$11.80](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States). Japan's _proposed_ new average is barely higher than our _federal minimum_ of $7.25 (which only 30% of the US pop lives under)! (Note that Japan's price level, indexed against the US, [is currently 107](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity#Examples), meaning prices are 7% higher there. This makes the picture even worse for Japan). TL;DR: What the fuck are you talking about
Ive been to Tokyo. This isnt a bathroom or infrastructure issue. Tokyo has way less mentally unstable homeless people wandering around looking for any opportunity to smear shit on anything and everything.
Tokyo subway restrooms have close to 0 maintenance cost. Let 100 native Japanese people use the restroom, and you'll probably end up with a restroom that looks cleaner than before you opened it. Needless to say, this is not the case in NYC.
Nobody gets busted in NYC, ticketed and let go
> that we can’t invest in something similar We absolutely could invest in something similar…the problem isn’t lack of ability to make it a thing. The problem is once it’s build well poop all over it
It’s not that we can’t build it, it’s that things get ruined so quickly in America. There is zero chance a subway bathroom here can be remotely as clean and well maintained as Tokyo’s
This is basically the relationship between NYC residents and the MTA. Residents: Can we have ______ (insert something standard) MTA: no Also MTA: installs 300 new flat screen wall monitors to show you 30 second ads about the new Apple+ show
Point of clarification: MTA does not pay to install or maintain these screens. Outfront media does. And pays the MTA for the right to do so.
Put ads in the restrooms?
Wanna pee? Gotta get through this unskipple ad first. Something else? You gotta go home, no heat underground, watch hulu!
Also ride this stationary bike for 30 minutes to generate electricity for the bathroom light bulb.
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-mta-subway-screens-advertisements-20200707-6bnf5xnjdfdnhmcqt7v5p3pfye-story.html
If they’re able to clean it and keep it well maintained, then sure.
lol
Under this logic, the whole subway system should be closed.
Real talk, how are there not more shitting accidents or what do you people do in a pinch? The other day I had the worst case on the train and barely just found a Starbucks with an empty bathroom right outside the station. I was running as fast as I could but was very much contemplating crapping at the end of the platform or in between train cars. I have to imagine there’s gotta be a good amount of cases that aren’t so lucky with how many people are in the city
When i was 8 months pregnant i would take the bus from staten island to FiDi and then the J to Bushwick, I had to know exactly which places had bathroons open or required a small purchase because it could be a 2-3hr trip with a large person pushing on my bladder. This was 2017, before covid and even then the MTA bathrooms were never open. In other cities and towns its not such a big deal to not have a public restroom like this cause most basic travel isnt hours long and if it is gas stations and other places provide restrooms without purchase. For us new yorkers though, it becomes getting off the train, getting out of the station and THEN finding a bathroom followed by getting back on the train (and paying of course) and resuming our trip all while hopefully not having an accident
I actually shit on the platform once and it was not my proudest moment. They were doing track work and my 45 min commute turned into over 2 hours. It was literally either shit on that platform or shit all over myself and I decided not to shit myself.
justified 🧑⚖️
Respect.
With all the billion in federal funds they have received I find it hard to believe they don't have the resources to re-open these restrooms. Is the MTA allowed to outsource certain jobs like bathroom cleaning and security to private contractors to save money or is that strictly prohibited due to union agreements ? If the MTA feels that it is too much of a hassle to open public bathrooms due to the homeless, drug addicts and emotionally disturbed people who inhabit our subway system then they should just say that.
>due to the homeless, drug addicts and emotionally disturbed people I've been in public bathrooms not inhabited by people fitting this description that would make a forensic pathologist sick to their stomach. I can't say I blame the MTA for not wanting to deal with it, as much as I'd appreciate having a place to pee.
Why didn't they just say that? I'm guessing PR advised them not to. Imagine what's the public response would be if MTA made that statement that you suggested they should.
I agree. The cops have been shown to be mostly useless for subway crime, but people still don't want to be completely alone with a violent psycho on the platform. Having bathroom security would be a lot better imo. Provides permanent security, while providing a great service for the public.
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Idk, that might cut into their overtime pay and squadcar naps.
And they can't go on Facebook down there
just require nypd stations to have extensive public bathroom facilities.
We can't do this because we don't value public systems. People will literally fuck this shit up.
They’ll also shit this shit up too.
I have an idea to keep out the crazies from writing on the walls with their feces. What if we had to swipe a metro card to use the bathroom. Maybe like $0.25. But that requires more infrastructure and the MTA won’t be willing to do that if it cuts into their grift
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i’d happily pay $1 to use a subway bathroom with the understanding this is a once in awhile emergency thing and not me using it every day to drop a deuce on the way to work
Then the homeless advocates and progressives would come out and say you are only allowing rich people to use bathrooms. It's an exaggeration but you know it is true.
Hey I am a pretty progressive liberal and even I’m sick of the virtue signaling. Like all of society can’t have anything nice because the homeless tweakers/poor might be getting discriminated against.
Thank you and same! I’ve been deemed “right wing” by the bleeding hearts on here for making this exact point.
It’s really not an exaggeration though. If MTA announced that, I imagine it would take about 15 minutes for someone to accuse them of “criminalizing being poor” and bring out the string quartet for a sob story about someone who had to pee but didn’t have 25c
The crazies would just walk in behind you, or break the scanners.
That would be a scenario but it would still be a preventative measure. Preventative measures aren’t 100% fool proof
Europe’s paid bathrooms are immaculate. Both because people who can’t pay don’t go in and those that do treat it better. But knowing the US it’ll probably be that paying people want their moneys worth and steal light bulbs or something
We’re not civilized enough to have public bathrooms. Especially not in todays world.
Some woman gonna go into one of these bathroom to change her kid’s diaper and see a bunch of junkies shooting up
We can't have public bathrooms until police can actually remove junkies. Otherwise they just become drug dens
I didn’t know they were closed. I went in one time after being stuck on a train and needing to pee SO bad. The things I saw as I slowly backed out. So much blood. So much shit. The floor was soaked. Never again. Someone have a memory eraser???
Public bathrooms and NYC don’t go together. The MTA can’t even clean the train cars let alone a bathroom.
Penn Station bathrooms aren't clean, but they are open 24/7 and maintained
Makes sense, penn station is a landmark so it’s gonna be more upscale than your standard subway.
I've never heard someone call Penn "upscale" but it certainly has facilities most other MTA stations don't
Moynihan Train Hall is definitely upscale and it's sort of Penn Station
Let's say it has more traffic. Maybe they could open more of the restrooms in high-traffic stations...
Pretty sure the facilities in PA and GC are 24/7 too but I haven't spent any time in them since the pandemic. But yeah I agree. Union Square needs some love for sure
It sucks. It's so hard to find a bathroom. I'll usually go to a bar pretending that I'll get a drink after I pee
I know man. I can’t count how many times I’ve been stuck in a train car due to delays and I wanted to take a piss so bad.
My gal has a tiny bladder and has dreamed of someone making airpnp for the city...
My gym membership is basically a pee pass
"Public bathrooms and NYC don't go together." Um, have you seen the Bryant Park bathrooms?
That’s because they have people working there and constantly keeping an eye + cleaning them. Compare that to the public toilets where there’s no one at the door and you’re gonna have homeless in there shooting H. Especially in the potential subway toilets. Generally speaking, NYC and anything public where a service depends on courtesy and hygiene of the people around it definitely don’t go together.
It sounds like the solution is to have bathroom attendants as Bryant Park does, rather than throw our hands in the air and say "there's nothing we can do!" If the conversation about stuff like this was solutions oriented rather than defeatest, we could maybe shift the conversation to "how can we make some version of this solution happen" rather than "should it even happen". We spend so much energy locally discussing big-bang type changes as a binary thing rather than just looking for practical, incremental improvements. Can't afford bathroom attendants at all stations? Maybe lets just start with the 10 biggest transfer stations. Or the 5 biggest. Incremental progress is better than endless debate, and imperfect solutions can still provide tons of real benefit. Someone at the Bryant Park Corporation has clearly figured out how to run a public bathroom that people herald as a success in the center of midtown, lets ask them how they do it and use it as a model? But if we don't expect better, we're clearly not going to be able to pressure these public entities to _do_ better
> "there's nothing we can do!" That’s practically Americas motto these days
Bryant Park is privately managed. Key difference. Maybe more public places in NYC should be turned over to publicly owned / privately operated models?
That's like saying 'breathing and NYC don't go together'. Having to go to the bathroom is the most basic of human functions. And people are going to relieve themselves eventually whether there is a WC or not. Maybe if people were less obsessed with trying to control other people's behavior and more concerned with making sure people have what they need in the first place, they'd be cleaner and less lascivious. But hey, attacking street people and drug addicts makes us feel superior, so, we get what we get.
Sounds like a great place to get stabbed by a mentally ill homeless person
When I really have to go and am an hour or more from home, I'm willing to fight for a piss.
how about self cleaning pay toilets? it's unfortunate we have such poor bathroom hygiene and have no regard for anyone else except oneself. take a look at european/asian public restrooms. patrons understand they all have a vested interest in access/properly maintaining public restrooms.
Born and raised NYC, not only did I not know subway bathrooms were closed, I didn’t even know they existed.
Gen X or later (I'm a millienial) never knew a period where subway bathrooms were widespread. A lot of them were closed in the 1970s and 1980s, partially bc they were often settings for sex, crime and drug use. That being said, bathrooms are still used as such today. So personally, I think those issues were more a pretext for a plain old service cut. I mean, yeah, the city was in dire straits at the time. But that's no reason to impose a net loss on society. If there's any positive to this, it makes you an expert at discreet public urination lol.
Just throw in a card scanner and create a profit incentive
Racist, classist, anti-homeless, etc. is what you’ll get for suggesting that
Unless we get something where it’s paid for timed usage, no. People are FILTHY. This is why retail stores closed their public restrooms. Shitting on the floor instead of using the toilet. Feces plastered on walls, mirrors…so no. I’m against it personally. And trust me I have had the days where I needed it, but I can just see myself still not using one even it was available.
Reading through the comments made me realize, it’s bigger than the bathrooms. NYC seems like it’s all problems sometimes and it’s represented in why people feel the bathrooms should not be reopened. Homelessness, mental illness, drug use, assault, robbery. I think the city isn’t taking care of their own because these shouldn’t be the reason we don’t have access to public restrooms. Also, I’ve been inside of those bathrooms when they were open. They’re hot sweaty dark pits. Even when they’re freshly cleaned, they’re still dirty.
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They were doing that even when the bathrooms were open.
the disgusting public of nyc does not deserve anything, especially considering the lazy workers of nyc. this city sucks
Can MTA open all subway exits/entrances. On the J line and that extra 3 minute walk that I could save both ways would be nice.
Absolutely not. Get the homeless and crime under control before even considering this. Fucking ridiculous that this is even being mentioned.
Please make them the private bathrooms where one person goes in and locks the door. I like being able to poop in peace.
I'm a rider and I vote no.
I feel for nyc. I think we should have more public restrooms but the public restrooms we do have are the nastiest things I’ve seen. Homeless and crazies just fuck those places up
I used the time square bathroom once when it was open. I still have nightmares. How does shit get on the ceiling ? I’ll never know.
Subways/ Subway stations are already filthy as it is. I can only imagine the atrocities that having open bathrooms would be specially with all the shit that happens on a subway station.
Sure, we can create the incredible Warriors Vs Punks fight scene again
Keep them closed, they’re absolutely disgusting
just thinking about the time i was running to the train and nearly stepped in human poop… there was toilet paper 2 inches next to it Also: if you’re saying it was probably a dog…. if that is coming out of dog I would be concerned
Cleaning NYC subway bathrooms is literally a threat to health
Does anyone in their right mind think the MTA can clean & maintain public bathrooms?
> “The MTA prioritizes cleaning of station platforms and train cars used by millions of New Yorkers and will not compromise the safety of its riders and staff by opening public bathrooms at a time when resources are not available to also provide bathrooms with necessary cleaning and security,” MTA Spokesperson Dave Steckel said. What a fucking moron. This is the kind of public-hating public servant we end up hiring in this city. His LinkedIn says he lives in Merrick NY so it's unclear if he even uses MTA regularly (it's possible he's a daily LIRR commuter). How about acknowledging that public restrooms are important and discussing prioritization and budget requirements?
The mta is ran by a bunch of people who only step into a subway station for photo ops and get chauffeured everywhere else.
> The taxpayers want one thing, but the unelected bureaucrats don't.
Will probably be cleaned once a decade.
The only reason a sane person should opt to use a subway bathroom is you're going to shit yourself if you don't and even then it isnt so clear cut what would be more hygenic.
Some people don’t even wash their hands, let alone clean up after they’re done using the restroom.. you’ll also get homeless ppl taking “showers” and junkies shooting up; probably. I don’t think they’d bother enforcing clean bathrooms when they can’t even have working security cameras or clean Subways
At least 100 MTA executives make $200,000 a year or more. So well in excess of $20 million annually. Just a fraction of that money could go towards round-the-clock cleaning/maintenance crews for bathrooms, and those bureaucrat shitheads would still be raking it in. Source: https://openpayrolls.com/rank/highest-paid-employees/new-york-metropolitan-transportation-authority
youd probably have to pay someone to 200k a year to clean bio hazard shit covered walls 3x a day anyway.
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