Vernon Toilets Seattle to Remove Automated Toilets

Starlee Speers - Vernon 105.7 SUNFM

The Downtown Vernon Association wants to know what business owners think about the need for public toilets. A survey has gone out asking business and property owners as well as employees in the downtown core their thoughts on the issue. DVA President Nola Neilson says she allows customers into her store to use the washroom but adds it has to be done selectively.The city of Vancouver has plans to install seventeen automated public toilets in the next ten years and Victoria has installed two pop-up toilets to stop people from urinating in the street.

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Victoria:

The tender for the devices closed recently, with only Urilift International making a $151,000 bid.
After the pop-up toilets arrive, it will take several weeks to get them certified for use, but "we have no reason to believe they won't work here," said Hill. He's confident the devices will reduce the number of instances of public urination after the city studied the problem, using portable stalls. They were well received by the public and the city's public works yard documented a reduction in the number of calls for cleaning up streets and alcoves. The cost of placing portable toilets out for three nights a week is estimated at $67,000 a year. Hill said he wasn't concerned about women wanting similar conveniences. "We are trying to curb a problem primarily caused by males in the late evening hours." A report to city council said pub patrons, not homeless people, accounted for most of the instances of public urination. Staff made the determination after monitoring use of the urinals. "We are confident in the relationship between the bar crowd and public urination," Hill said, adding they continue to monitor the use of the portable toilets.

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Vancouver:

The CBC is reporting that the City has decided to install more of the automatic public toilets provided and maintained by CBS Decaux.

“Although the toilets have been criticized as smelly havens for drug users and homeless people,” - who by? How can they be havens when they cannot be occupied for more than 12 minutes? Since they clean themselves, as well as getting a cleaning crew visit 4 times a day, they are not smelly either. And how is it that what works in other cities can never be accepted here?

There is a desperate shortage of public facilities in this city, especially downtown. And the constant harping on about street people should not be an excuse for never doing anything for the rest of the population.

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Seattle to Remove Automated Toilets

SEATTLE — July 17,2008 After spending $5 million on its five automated public toilets, Seattle is calling it quits. In the end, the restrooms, installed in early 2004, had become so filthy, so overrun with drug abusers and prostitutes, that although use was free of charge, even some of the city’s most destitute people refused to step inside them.The units were put up for sale Wednesday afternoon on EBAY with a starting bid set by the city at $89,000 apiece.

The dismal outcome coincides with plans by New York, Los Angeles and Boston, among other cities, to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for expansion this fall in their installation of automated toilets — stand-alone structures with metal doors that open at the press of a button and stay closed for up to 20 minutes. The units clean themselves after each use, disinfecting the seats and power-washing the floors. Seattle officials say the project here failed because the toilets, which are to close on Aug. 1, were placed in neighborhoods that already had many drug users and transients. Then there was the matter of cost: $1 million apiece over five years, which because of a local ordinance had to be borne entirely by taxpayers instead of advertisers. In the typical arrangement involving cities that want to try automated toilets, an outdoor advertising company like JCDecaux provides, operates and maintains them for the municipality in exchange for a right to place ads on public property like bus stops and kiosks. Revenue from the advertisers flows to both the company and the city.