Shameless plug: I developed a site to help with this in my city Winnipeg called Winnipee.<p>It went viral last summer and had a flurry of activity with community contributions (locations, updates). Winter came, traffic levelled off, and it didn't spike again this summer (though it has remained stable).<p>I tried to track whether it was OK to use the washroom without a purchase, wheelchair accessibility, size. When I worked at McDonald's, an executive told me they wanted their customers to know there was always a bathroom they could use anywhere in the world even if they weren't making a purchase this visit.<p>AFAIK, Starbucks had a similar policy for a long time.<p>It was interesting to see how some locations featured immediately locked down their washrooms.<p>I had a Tim Hortons franchise owner email me and freak out, so we marked her location as "purchase required."<p>It's been pretty brutal here with the meth crisis, though, so I also get it.<p>At the end of the day, I would love for our governments to provide taxpayer funded facilities around the city and even on several of our major highways. We used to have a lot here but they closed almost all of them.<p>You can check it out: <a href="https://www.winnipee.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.winnipee.com</a>
San Francisco has tried. The first modern try was the JCDecaux self-cleaning street toilets. (JCDecaux is really an ad company. The street toilets are just a way to get ads on public property.) The first problem was that that the US required them to be wheelchair-accessable. So they were 3x as big and several times more expensive than the smaller units in Paris.[1]<p>They are noted for working fine in tourist areas, and badly in homeless areas. Making them big enough for wheelchair accessibility makes them big enough for drug deals, too.
They're also far too expensive. The cleaning machinery is standard industrial automation equipment from Telemechanique. I've seen one opened for servicing. If you built a washing machine that way, it would cost $20,000. It requires power, water, and a phone line.<p>There's the Portland Loo.[2] This is designed for maximum homeless proofing. Graffiti-resistant. Gratings at top and bottom instead of solid walls, for reduced privacy.
It's not self-cleaning, but can be hosed down or pressure-washed. Only needs a water line; power requirements are low enough to be supplied by a solar panel. “It’s not supposed to be a comfortable place” - Portland Loo sales manager. Seems to work, but $500,000 installed is a bit much, even with all that heavy stainless steel.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanisette" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanisette</a><p>[2] <a href="https://portlandloo.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://portlandloo.com/</a>
This is very much a regional thing.<p>In most of the US, my experience has been that every gas station and every restaurant has a public restroom that's unlocked at all times. They're sometimes nasty, but always available, and even the ones that are nominally for customers only aren't regulated at all.<p>There are some places I've been that keep the restroom locked, but where I've been that's a sign that you're in a particularly sketchy neighborhood, not a regular thing. The first time I had a major problem finding a restroom at all was driving through Las Vegas a few years ago. I've only become aware that there are other places like that through articles like this on HN.
It won’t be for everyone but there’s a show on HBO called “How To With John Wilson” where he picks a theme for the week and deep dives down multiple threads around the chosen topic.<p>A few weeks ago he did one called “How to find a public restroom” and it was shocking to me how unavailable such a necessity is in even major cities with high population density. I get that in general public restrooms end up in disarray but I also think that represents more that we just aren’t willing to fund the required maintenance to keep them in better shape.<p>Side note: the funniest part from the episode was when he tricked one of the self cleaning bathrooms in New York to run a cleaning cycle while he was inside filming, was hilarious.
Public, no, but in general every Walmart / Starbucks / ... (except Subway) have a restroom available.<p>Try finding a place in Belgium... if you find one, you have to pay, even if you area already a paying customer (e.g. Kinepolis, a large theater chain) or when you're in a park there's a restroom with a friggin' card reader to charge you half a Euro to take a piss. I found a tree close-by.<p>And grocery chains aren't even legally required to have a restroom available to customers.
I'm a dude in his 50s now (that still feels weird to say), and I have to pee all the damn time. Going out in public always involves studying the restroom situation ahead of time. Even so, I've pee'ed in countless alleys, side-roads, and parking lots; I'm always discreet as possible, but I still don't like to do it.<p>New York City is the absolute worst. Disgusting doesn't bother me, but why are the damn subway restrooms always closed?!
Public restrooms are hard to find in America but even harder in most other countries.<p>Yes this is a problem we should solve but it's kind of ridiculous to imply it's an issue only in America. In the vast majority of countries on earth, you must either pay or purchase something to use the restroom.
I don’t understand this. I’ve lived in America my entire life (I’m roughly 40) and literally never been unable to find a public restroom.<p>I’m sure there are certain cities where it’s harder (maybe NYC, etc.) but “Public restrooms are hard to find in <i>America</i>” is stretching the truth pretty far.
Restrooms in the US are super easy to find, compared to Germany where I grew up. It's not only public restrooms (at least here on the west coast), but it's also completely acceptable to walk into a restaurant or store and just ask if you can use theirs. Several visiting relatives and friends from Europe were completely amazed by this. Contrast that to the fact that lots of public restrooms in Europe cost a small fee - with cash in the right small value coins that you of course don't have on you when you need to go urgently.
This is really only a problem in densely urban areas and even then not across all of them. To say public restrooms are hard to find in America is I think a mischaracterization. It would be more fair to say public restrooms are hard to find in American cities, but then Id wager all urban areas around the globe have struggled with this problem in one way or another.<p>Anecdotally, in my hometown in Florida I’ve never had an issue finding a bathroom, not even in larger cities like Orlando and Tampa. But my experience finding bathrooms in Seattle, Washington was quite horrendous.
I've personally never had trouble going to a restaurant or other place with restrooms for customers, but I'm sure things are very different in places known for people who are homeless, drug-addicted, mentally ill, or criminals.<p>If people use few consumables and keep the restroom clean, it's probably more likely to remain open to the public. But I'd imagine the staff doesn't want to clean up a biohazard or deal with dirty needles.
The author probably hasn't been to London or continental Europe.<p>Good luck finding a trash receptacle in Victoria station. (Yes, the historical reasons.) Meanwhile, the US has millions of potential shrapnel trash cans everywhere. After some psycho terrorists goes after them, then it would change. A hoop with a clear bag is far safer for everyone.
I'll never understand why more cities haven't invested in the Portland Loo or similar concepts for public bathrooms...<p><a href="https://portlandloo.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://portlandloo.com/</a>
There's a touristy little town about half an hours drive from me (NZ not America) that has a few cafes and what not. We used to go there multiple times a year, but recently they cut their number of public toilets down to about a third. Now I just don't go. I don't want to queue up to take a piss with a bunch of tourists.
This isn't rocket science. Just rent a line of portapotties. The portapottie company will maintain them. Increase or decrease the number as required. Move them around.<p>An order of magnitude cheaper than any other option.
Just got back from Europe and this was my biggest complaint about the places we visited.<p>Living in Florida, I never have a problem finding restrooms. Not sure what kind of restroom oasis the author is from, but, at least here in Florida, restrooms are <i>not</i> hard to find.
I got kicked out of the house by my dad when I was 16. He let me keep my car thankfully. I lived in Florida and I would park at the beaches that had public bathrooms + showers just to get by.. Weird time of my life. No pub bathrooms anywhere else..
Europe solved this problem ages ago with pay toilets and regular police patrol. Some even clean themselves which has an added benefit of dissuading long term residents. The problem has been solved but city's avoid this because NIMBY's will say it incentives drugs, sex, homelessness, etc.<p>Citizens do not trust that the government will maintain and police them properly, and I think the homeless and sanitary situation in San Francisco is a perfect example.
This is a huge problem in San Francisco. It's solvable too, but for whatever reason famously the City's leadership isn't really trying to make things better. We live right by Oracle Park where the giants play. On game days there is a flood of fans that piss all over our block. They pee all over our building, sidewalks, everywhere. There is vomit all over too. So much so the buildings here have to pay people to clean it up every morning.<p>While all this is happening...there is a public restroom in the area that was clearly built for this purpose. It's never open, it's been locked the entire time we've lived in the neighborhood.<p>I've been working on an idea to just start a non profit that distributes those 5 gallon buckets with those cheap toilet seat lids you can get for them. Then pay people to pick them up and drop them off periodically. Anything is better than letting people continue to defecate in our streets.<p>I'm not even talking about the homeless population here, just average people, baseball fans.<p>I'm also not trying to dog on baseball or sports fans in general, I'm one. I'm just saying we should try to figure out a better way.
A show called 'How to With John Wilson' did an episode on exactly this topic recently, and as a non-American it was truly bizarre to see what the situation is like in New York. Not sure how embellished it was, but I was shocked.
Reading through this thread about open drug markets, cars being smashed into and homeless people smearing shit on the walls, I feel extremely grateful to live in Australia.<p>Even in the "bad areas" of major cities, you don't get shit like this. Worst I've seen regularly are junkies scamming on Facebook marketplace, or minor shoplifting.
I was a bit shocked when in some Canada's Horton's there was a disposable needle trash for the junkies, so I get why WiFi might be free for all but restrooms not so much
Is this a big city, east coast, west coast problem?<p>I feel like in the Midwest most businesses treat this as a loss leader and want you to come in and use their bathrooms.
I feel comfortable calling myself a world traveler, and with that in mind I have to say: no, they really aren't. Outside of VERY small town america, there is a bathroom at every gas station. Every big box store. Every fast food restaurant.<p>Try going to most of Europe, or Asia. Finding a bathroom is like a needle in a haystack in comparison, and often times when you do find one, you need money to pay to use it. I will say they are generally cleaner, and more "private" than most US bathrooms (at least in western Europe), but if you think it's tough to find one in the US - you probably don't want to travel abroad.
Is this a homeless thing or something?<p>When travelling in the US I've just done the same thing I do anywhere. Enter a fast food place, coffee shop etc and ask to use the loo. Job done.<p>I very rarely use truly public toilets in the UK either.
Apparently in 70s there was also a bit of a moral panic over "illicit sexual encounters" happening in public washrooms as well that might have had something to do with them being closed.
My company designed and built the first few prototypes for a startup, Throne Labs, who deploy prefab, off-grid, (semi-)publicly-accessible (you have to have their app) bathrooms.<p>Seems like they solved some core problems: finding suitable sites and partners, using semi-permanent modules that don't require [quite as] complicated/slow/expensive permitting and utility tie-ins, and some clever ways to get them re-stocked and cleaned regularly using gig labor (I always understood this to be the biggest challenge for offering public bathroom - labor cost of cleaning and resupply.)<p>They moved on to a higher-volume producer so I've been out of touch on their progress, but I thought it was a interesting solution in the face of what I learned to be outrageous expenditure - $300k, $500k(!) - on municipal bathrooms that quickly go defunct or get destroyed, and a lack of public restroom access during the pandemic.<p>During the project I learned a lot about how rideshare and package delivery companies just assume stops with restrooms are available on the routes (I'd love to hear what the actual company training/guidance says! It's easy to find stories about Amazon drivers peeing in bottles etc...)<p>I also gained a lot of empathy for people who have more frequent and urgent bathroom needs than my own - having trust in availability of facilities can make a world of difference!
I feel like restrooms are much easier to find in America than anywhere else. Restaurants and hotels usually offer them for free. It’s weird to have to pay for them in Europe
It’s things like this that prevent more public restrooms.<p><a href="https://ibb.co/CzpmTR6" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://ibb.co/CzpmTR6</a>
For a while, the highway-adjacent gas station and restaurant bathrooms were shut down in California because of covid.<p>I suspect that many ditches got “irrigated” that year.
It wasn't long ago that the enlightened people writing news stories were informing us that public toilets encouraged homelessness and crime. Business that allowed the public to use their toilets were "gently encouraged" not to do so anymore.<p>Perhaps we could go back and see who wanted to make public toilets unavailable, and make sure they're not still influencing public policy?
I’m American but I’m typing this comment out at a campsite in Iceland.<p>I noticed they pointed out how many public bathrooms Iceland has. This seems misleading to me. From my understanding, in Iceland it is literally illegal to just pull off the side of the road and pee if you need, since nearly all areas of the country have laws to protect the nature. (For example it is also illegal to hike or camp off-trail.)<p>This is only tenable if there are a large amount of public bathrooms available, otherwise tourists would just ignore the law. So Iceland has a disproportionate amount of bathrooms for conservation reasons.<p>It is even more misleading because many of these bathrooms driving around cost a small fee (200ISK) to use even though they are “public”, I.e. owned by the government and available to everyone. And they only take credit card.<p>In Reykjavík finding a bathroom is probably about as hard as finding one in NYC.
For those who want to help out with adding all public toilets to OpenStreetMap: I made a website to make this easy: <a href="https://mapcomplete.org/toilets" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://mapcomplete.org/toilets</a><p>You can see all toilets without an account and add a missing toilet or update information with a free/libre OpenStreetMap-account. Adding information also means it'll get picked up eventually by many of the navigation apps out there (such as Maps.me, Organic Maps, OsmAnd, nearly all of the cycle+pedestrian route planners, ...).<p>And there are many other thematic maps - a template system makes them easy to setup: <a href="https://mapcomplete.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://mapcomplete.org/</a>
This must be regional.<p>There are public restrooms basically everywhere by me in WI.<p>Every gas station, every restaurant, fast food etc, every store in general has a public and unlocked restroom in my experience. There are public restrooms at most parks too.
Public bathrooms are actually one of the few things that US cities are undeniably better at than European cities. You almost always have to pay in Europe and even paid ones can be hard to come by.
Some public restrooms in other countries are well kept without frequent maintenance. Most restrooms in America are gross and it'll take more than a couple generations to fix this.<p>This will be an unpopular opinion but I think parents should teach their children how to go #1 or #2 properly. For example, water tension will make pee drizzle splash everywhere. Pee on the left or right side of the porcelain.<p>Good habits begin at home and most are being taught in daycare by teachers who would rather not stare at kids while they go.
I am just back from Naples. Even in restaurants, restrooms are not a given. And for sure no toilet seat, toilet paper, or paper towels. Never had this issue in the US.
Seems like it would be possible to come up with partnerships between local businesses and governments. A business could be paid a certain amount to make their bathroom publicly accessible. As I’m writing this it’s sounding familiar, so maybe this is already a thing in some places? Could maybe even have the local government send out crews to do the cleaning.
They may be hard to find, but in the Netherlands - you can't find them. There are a few "paid" toilets (if you have exact change) in the cities (Rotterdam, Amsterdam) and maybe other places.<p>Needless to say, if you go out - just plan on holding it in until you get home.
In cities yes because of vagrants yet in the suburbs and rural areas ... public bathrooms are easy to find everywhere. I think Ive been to some places of businesses in cities that gave me the keycode to the bathroom once you buy something.
You can tell a lot about a society by how it treats its toilets. Both about the maintainer/owner of the toilet as well as the users.<p>In the U.S., a toilet might as well be an insect that is about to be smashed underneath a shoe.
I built something too, uses OpenStreetMap and has a catalog of ~400,000 bathrooms.<p><a href="https://free2pee.github.io/free2pee/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://free2pee.github.io/free2pee/</a>
Plenty of public bathrooms in Japan and Korea.<p>The U.S can't have many nice things because it has an epidemic of homeless people, many of whom are mentally ill and/or addicted to drugs, but can't get treatment.
If anyone thinks public restrooms are hard to find in the US, try living in a developing world country like the Philippines. Public urination is so common here; you see it and smell it everywhere.
How about wearing a diaper? Problem solved.
Just kidding. What's the problem with providing public urinals?
I don't get it.
Here is an simple example from Hamburg.
<a href="https://www.heringinternational.com/fileadmin/images/content/de/sanitaer/2020/st%C3%A4dte_und_kommunen/Urinal/Hamburg__Hauptbahnhof__Urinalstand_960x480.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.heringinternational.com/fileadmin/images/content...</a>
You'll find something similar everywhere in Europe.
I had been in SF once. This was the smelliest city expierence I ever had yet.
I wonder if this is the death of public spaces. If you want community you need people to be able to leave their homes for extended periods and join each other in public. It should be stable stakes for any civilised democracy to have public conveniences IMHO
People think its the homeless pooping on the streets of San Francisco but I was an employed software engineer making 6+ figures and pooped on the street one time since I could find a restroom.
Suckers. I do NFPA25 fire protection inspections throughout NYC and let them know they will be getting a visit from the fire department if they do not let me use their bathroom.<p>I have an entire map of private luxury bathrooms in NYC I can use now.
10 year old boy arrested in Mississippi for urinating in public after he couldn't find a public restroom in August<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/08/us/mississippi-boy-arrested-urinating-outdoors/index.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/08/us/mississippi-boy-arrested-u...</a>