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The World's Most-High Tech Urinal
Mudzy writes "In an effort to handle its nighttime public urination problem, Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, is considering installing high-tech urinals that disappear below street level during the day. Then at night, an operator comes by with a remote and the Urilift hydraulically lifts to sidewalk level in about two minutes. Then the unit is ready to serve all the nighttime party animals who don't mind peeing in a very exposed public urinal. The $75,000 system has been installed across the Netherlands, and have spread to London and Belfast, but Victoria will be the first North American city to try them out."
People who to drunk to care will do it wherever (or piss their pants if they're completely wasted).
People who are desperate because there's no open public toilets will continue to (attempt to) hide behind a tree, bus stop or anything else.
Don't you just hate it when people reply to your signature?
Many places are lucky they're installed at all. Here in the US, it would cause a lot of pissed off Christians to get that program going. Remember, we may have *penises and/or vaginas*, but we're not suppose to admit it. The last thing most of the religious people want to have is that fact being out in the open. And if you read this post, you're dirty dirty dirty!!!!!!
I came, I saw, She conquered.
I dunno...these things would be a Godsend for New Orleans during Mardi Gras!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Quite often there aren't enough port-a-potty's around for you to find one....and afterawhile of drinking on the streets, that stuff starts to run through ya pretty fast, and it isn't like you're too terribly embarrased as to where you have to 'whip it out' to take a leak.
On the other hand, I wonder how long it would take when these came out, that the city/state would be sued for discrimination against women who needed to go 'in public', or would be slapped with injunctions about them not being 'handicapped friendly'.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Unfortunately, you're probably correct associating our countrywide genital shame with the pervasive religious majority.
Who wants public urination at all? Not me. A little modesty, attributable to whatever source, keeping you from pissing in front of me is a good thing.
This is a cool product, addressing an icky problem -- I'd just hate to see these installed unnecessarily, actually encouraging people to relieve themselves in public.
These things need all the hookups that a standard bathroom requires -- water, sewer, power. Why not just put in some extra drains, like storm drains, in discreet locations? Maybe throw a wall in front of it? Some subtle public education would do the rest.
Dirt doesn't need luck.
I'll grant you waiters and anyone handling my food. Other than that, why? I shower once daily and put my dick into a clean pair of boxers. My hands touch all sorts of dirty filthy crap during the course of the day. My johnson however (unless its a crazy day) stays tucked safely in said boxers until I take it out to pee. My johnson is probably thousands of times cleaner than my hands. If anything I should wash my hands BEFORE I touch it. But afterwards? I'm not catching anything from it, so unless I pissed all over my hands what's the point?
Jeez people, it's just skin.
Oh, and for the record, urine is generally sterile unless it picks up bacteria while exiting through the urethra. Well if you're dirty or diseased you should be washing anyway.
My rantings, only longer and with better spelling..
ah yes... not getting your fingers wet... what really matters is not getting your skirt/pants/jeans or knickers wet either... or keeping it in the urinal and not getting it all over the floor...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Yep, and Victoria still washes its raw sewage into the ocean which drifts into American waters (Victoria the good neighbour you wished you didn't have). Very eco-friendly of Victoria (not). You see, this is another instance of Canadian environmentalism.
This is the same thinking that got the Canadian federal government to sign the Kyoto agreement and then allow air emissions to increase almost 35% instead of reducing them (to be fair, this really is mostly the former Liberal government's fault for signing the agreement but failing to pass any laws or regulations with teeth/penalties for not complying... only voluntary guidelines for industry... what a joke). Whether you agree with Kyoto or not, if you sign an agreement to do something, you do it. Now it is economically impossible to meet the limits they agreed to without bringing the country to screaming stop.
In Canada, if it is convenient, we'll do something. If it is not, we'll say how we should do it, and do nothing. Time to go, I need get my hypocritical ass over to go look for a Hummer H2 to get my groceries up my West Vancouver driveway before I protest about the environmental impact of the Eagle Ridge bluffs highway expansion (I'm worried the highway might block the construction company my mutual fund has bought into from building more condos up the side of the mountain in West Vancouver you see). Yep that highway is really an environmental issue causing the financial environment of the price of my house I had built on pristine mountain side to go down. I am Joe and I am Canadian.
All it takes is a frequency scanner and data recorder. First night, get the frequency it operates on. Next night show up with a datalogger to sniff the data used to raise/lower the device.... Or, you could buy a remote off one of the poor guys whose job it is to raise the damn things.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance