Pay toilets and NYT: a free market microcosm

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

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?

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

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.

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."

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.

> 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?

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.

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.

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.

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-a...

(Unfortunately, the city doesn't see much of that)

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.