Estimated cost for an adequate ADA facility (2) on the plaza, planing budget?… 35k… final cost $450K, annual maintenance 30K… annual public contribution (for fee stalls) [-] Job creation value [+]

We live in a world now where when you walk into a restroom the lights come on and go off automatically, the fixtures go on and off automatically (toilet, sink, urinal, air dryers) and the security camera’s outside record everyone that enters and leaves.

There is a site that is in the center of town, and watched 24/7 by about everyone. You can screen a building so it’s dry, but very ventilated, with the opaque walls 2″ above the concrete/tile floor…. 2′ from the roof, no glass. There are redundant floor drains, and all can be hosed clean…. Like 10,000 public bathrooms across the country.

We cannot figure a way to build a public restroom that will be safe and clean? Give me a break, ‘we’ don’t want to… when we want to, there are 1000 successful ways.

High use, requires high maintenance… some stalls can be pay, some free, all must be attended to..

In civilized nations a person remains in attendance 24/7 and is tipped on exiting… great job for someone starting up the ladder again…

We have yet to become civilized, theres still some hope.

For a really fancy solution see JD Decadeux toilets in SF…. We could do better, more simply. Those cost a fortune.

Marc Delany

I’ve read on some Google search results that the auto-toilets can be problematic because several of lines forming outside. Conventional restrooms can apparently serve more users per day for the same cost as automatic models.

Camping in an auto-toilet would seem impossible for all but Spiderman.

I heard city council discussion at one point of a security camera. That seems creepy to me, but perhaps it is necessary.

Depending on the model, annual maintenance costs are estimated at between $15,000 and $40,000.

Funding for construction will also have to be determined.

http://arcata.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=8&clip_id=1086&meta_id=64756

We’re on a roll – let’s keep going!

The other problems are camping, as people actually barricaded the doors and built campfires in the ITF restrooms, and ensuring an expectation of safety inside this building. Then there’s the requirement for near-constant janitorial maintenance.

These are the extremely difficult conundrums attendant to this issue which the abundance of idealistic platitudes are of no help in addressing.

Treatments can be applied to walls if graffti really is a problem for bathroom users. Anti-graffiti treatments have a trade off between toxicity and permanence.

Every public bathroom gets vandalized to some degree. The People’s Park bathrooms in Berkeley are sometimes ravaged sometimes but it doesn’t stop people from from using them. In the case of Berkeley, I’m sure people would use alternatives if they existed, but none do. Basketball players especially drink enough fluids to make good use the only reasonable public restroom in downtown Berkeley.

It seems to me that Arcata has been grinding its gears for years about how to make the perfect bathroom with no public bathroom at all. Even an ugly bathroom would be an improvement from zero.