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Comment by Kluny | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure when that was, but when I was in Germany in 2017 my experience was that every gas station had a washroom that was available to the public at a cost of about 1 euro. There was no attendant, but a coin-operated gate. The washrooms were large, well lit, perfectly clean, had several stalls and often showers as well. It's a sharp contrast to the free washroom experience in most North American gas stations, which is a single stall that you need to request a key for, usually horrifyingly dirty.

I resented paying the euro a bit, but the format made a lot of sense to me.

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In most ares of the US, it is illegal to charge to use the restroom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_to_End_Pay_Toilets_i...

That is actually a more recent (~20 years?) development. You cannot say anything about the quality of restrooms, but it is basically one company (Sanifair) for all of Germany that established a monopoly. People working there are often sub-contractors with bad working conditions. You get a coupon for the price you paid to exchange against wares at the local gas stop.

The coupon was created to get acceptance for paying, which wasn't common a few years back, but most of them never get redeemed. It is a business worth billions.

Unfortunately people tend to fall for coupons of any kind because they suggest you could save money.

For those who do redeem the coupon, it's often an incentive to spend money they normally wouldn't have (in high-margin stores).

Very true. Additionally, in many cases the shop and toilets belong to the same parent company.

At least the business case isn't stupid.

>It's a sharp contrast to the free washroom experience in most North American gas stations, which is a single stall that you need to request a key for, usually horrifyingly dirty.

I have road tripped around much of the western US and can think of only one time encountering a bathroom like this. In fact, clean bathrooms seem like a major point of competition between gas stations.

I see the clean restrooms/competition thing a lot on interstate roads. Its more the secondary highways and byways where the gas stations only do enough business to have 1 employee/owner working at a time that have small/dirty bathrooms.

If you want to pee for free at a German Autobahn stop at one of the rest areas without a gas station or shop. They still feature the usual public toilets with all that this entails.

The same system - Sanifair - is also active in the UK; last time I was in Germany, they cost 70 cents per visit - extrapolate that to the amount of visitors / hour and I think you get a decent wage to keep the toilets clean at all times. In addition, you get a coupon worth 50 cents, which can be spent at all gas stations / truck stops using the same system (most of them), incentivising making a purchase to help cover more costs.

In addition, the bathroom areas are designed to be easy to clean and brightly lit.

The toilets in the station I commute via daily are like this but without taking contactless payment it's of little use to me. I barely-ever carry cash and never coinage.

I travel quite a bit on the weekends, on the way to my girlfriend, and all toilets that I've seen are nfc-enabled (Baden-Württemberg -- Bayern). Except for Crailsheim. There are Toilets by the Bahn, but are closed at 18:00 or so.

It seems to me that in the past decade or so, gas station restrooms in the US have gotten much better. Yes, you can still find nasty hole-in-the-wall toilets if you look in small independent gas stations that have been there forever, but nearly all of the chain stations are at least cleaned regularly and many are almost luxurious in comparison to the past.

Yep. I remember how horrible gas station restrooms used to be back in the 1980s. They aren't like that any more, now that we have big chains like Wawa.

Maybe it's a product of where I live - an island on the west coast where there are no interstates and many independent gas stations.

I think they figured out they were losing money by having people avoiding their facilities.

Most gas station restrooms in the US aren't terrible anymore, I haven't seen a bad one in over a decade.

If you got the pay for it I doubt that it is actually solving the problem of people urinating in the street. The main question seems to be if there is enough business that provide the facility for free to the public.

American truck stops have huge clean bathrooms with separate showers (for fee) as well. I’ve never tried a truck stop shower, though.

So do poor people in Germany just not poop? Or are there no poor people?

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