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Seattle Flushes $5M High-Tech Toilets
theodp writes "Hopes were high back in 2004 as Seattle's posh public potties opened for business. But four years later, city officials have said good riddance to the five high-tech toilets, self-cleaning and cylindrical, that had cost Seattle $5 million. The city unloaded them on eBay for just $12,549. The commodes had become filthy hide-outs for drug use and prostitution."
As a Parisian, I can tell you that the people here will probably not move their finger to prevent druggies and prostitutes in toilets. But the cops will.
I think the issue in Seattles is the classic political correctness of Americans:
Toilets had to be accessible to disabled people.
Due to that requirement, you end up with huge toilets, which, by definition, have more use than the Parisian sanisette (I think that if a prostitute went with customers in a sanisette, there would probably be people outside clapping their hands when they would come out, due to sheer awesomeness of such an act).
Also, being huge, Seattles sanisettes were costly, so they ended up with only 5. 5 is a very small number, so of course they have been broken very fast.
In Paris, sanisettes are NOT accessible to disabled people. There are special ones that ARE accessible, but those are NOT accessible to the general public (you need a specific card), so they are kept in a correct state.
That is not politically correct. But it works.