Slashdot Mirror
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."
We're talking about Seattle, so most of the people there would've been cool with that if the janitor had just visited more often.
;_;
God, I wish I didn't have to move.
And common.
... and then they built the supercollider.
In Vancouver, BC, drug use and prostitution are (if not outright legal) decriminalized. This means that the government is able to help those with a problem instead of being forced to put them away in prison.
The public toilets getting abused is a sign of a much deeper problem. It's the puritanical mindset of Americans that pushes these normal behaviors into the shadows and away from the help that the victims so desperately need.
It's a total waste of time to sell these things. It just means fewer public bathrooms downtown, and if you've ever been to a city with no public bathrooms (Philadelphia), you know that the terrible smell is the result.
must have been swimming in their people's money to buy $5M in toilets. If I were a resident I'd be quite enraged over it.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
1. Legalize drugs and prostitution.
2. ???
3. PROFIT!!!
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
Sounds like they got ripped off in the first place. It shouldn't cost that much to develop something like that unless you have no clue about what you're doing.
I'm sorry David, I can't do that.
I'm confused. This type of toilet is quite popular all sorts of places, so I guess they must be cheaper than providing toilets in some other way. But as Seattle aren't going to be replacing them with anything else... that is going to be cheaper. So, what's the story? That Seattle can't afford public toilets?
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
Just gets better and better.
Still, you get the government you deserve.
Deleted
Amsterdam's toilets look like a 404? What, do you have to piss into the hole between the two fours?
That sucks, but this is how progress works. You can't know if something will pan out in advance, because there are too many variables.
And if it had been a massive success, $5M would have been pocket change compared to the convenience and cost effectiveness of full automation.
Nah, they just have a quick thinking sysadmin who reads Slashdot.
Deleted
How on earth did five toilets for $5 million get green-lighted? It must have been a consultant spending somebody else's money and with a fee to justify. How are the voters of Seattle going to reward that terrible waste? Just crazy. That's what's wrong with American right now--so many people willing to screw their fellow man if they can make a dollar off of it. Call it the American way (I would not) but it's killing us. We need to get some honesty and proportion back in our daily lives and business.
Google is offering the use of a new set of public gToilets in exchange for the ability to scan your waste for leftover products and potential diseases and then offer you contextual ads while you're in the unit.
So Seattle's authorities were flushed with success untill their 'Big Idea' went down the pan!
Smivs on the intertubes!
This is like when they put up park benches that are intentionally made uncomfortable to sleep on. I understand why, but something is just wrong with society when that happens.
From the article the issue was keeping the self-cleaning toilets clean...they got clogged with trash.
The drug use and prostitution bit was a worry in the original article when they were being installed.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Slashdot - news of turds, stuff that splatters.
At the bottom of the
I mean, where are good honest Republicans like our men Larry Craig and Bob Allen going to go for a little dick?
Does that mean they just had sex there or that the ladies were actually soliciting the clients from inside the toilet room? And most important of all, were they dubbed "high-tech prostitutes" as a result? I wonder if there's any geek among the old profession who will be kind enough to provide the technical details...
and seattle, the home of starbucks, should have known that
i'm dead serious. i live in midtown manhattan, and finding a toilet for a tourist, nevermind a resident, is near impossible were it not for a certain chain of coffee shops that monopolize every street corner. and they always have a restroom (unless they are those tiny stores), and those restrooms are open to the public without fail. there are some starbucks nearby subway entrances where if you go sit, you'll notice there is a regular stream of visitors... to the commode, and no one even pretends to want to buy a coffee
you really have to understand what a blessing this is. it really is unique to starbucks: every other establishment, including mcdonalds and other fast food places, are usually hostile to making its restrooms available. but i guess coffee chases away vagrants, as the unstable and stinky always seem to congregate to mcdonalds for their restroom needs, bothering the grumbling manager behind the counter for a key rather than shuffling a few more steps around the corner to go to a keyless starbucks restroom. why the homeless do this, i don't know, but that is 100% true. habit? familiarity?
i used to think the city made starbucks keep their restrooms open for this very reason, as it is such a huge boon in convenience for midtown visitors, workers, and residents. or perhaps a marketing droid at starbucks headquarters noticed a correlation between sales and restroom availability? who knows, but for a non-new york city resident, it is hard to understand what a blessing starbucks restrooms have been for the city
whatever the reason for the mana from heaven of bum-free starbucks commodes in midtown, i'd like to thank starbucks with my very own original marketing slogan, they can use it free of charge:
"if you are thinking of something steaming and brown, think starbucks in midtown" ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Don't be so sure, I've met some freaky people from Amsterdam.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
The company that build them (WALL AG http://www.wall.de/ or their american subsidiary WALL USA) are operating close to a 100 of those in Berlin and they work fine. I do not know how they sold this service in Seattle, but three things they did in Berlin that could've solved some of the problems are: 1) The toilets are not free. 0.5 Euro per session. 2) They are financed through advertising with included billboards and everything, which also helps maintaining them, because everytime the posters are renewed (at least once week), they do necessary repair jobs. The newer models are networked for remote monitoring and maintenance. The latest models even include Interactive displays. 3) Doors open after 30 minutes, no matter what. In Berlin, Wall has pretty much revolutionized (and almonst monopolized) public installations like these, because they are doing a hell of a job designing "street furniture" as they call it. Public toilets before these were installed were anything from a nuisance to a biohazard and the cityscape drastially improved in most places through their work.
"The public toilets getting abused is a sign of a much deeper problem. It's the puritanical mindset of Americans that pushes these normal behaviors into the shadows and away from the help that the victims so desperately need."
That's a crock of BS. It's puritanical to expect people not to do really, really stupid things? Because heroin isn't exactly an unknown quantity. We've known that it's 100 percent addictive for, oh, centuries now. If you're a smack addict, you're not a victim. You did it to yourself. You know what's going to happen when you put that needle in your arm. You know because everyone else that's done it has ended up the same way.
Prostitution is a little different, because sometimes prostitutes are victims. But many aren't. Many do it willingly and like it. Don't fool yourself on that.
People like to hold up Las Vegas and Amsterdam as examples of tolerance, examples of how we can integrate drug users and prostitution into "normal" society (well, not drugs for Vegas, but hooking is legal there). And yet, after decades of "tolerance" they're busy dismantling the Red Light district in Amsterdam, chasing out the porn places with normal shops. They're tired of dirty needles and trash in their parks, and they're arresting and re-locating junkies. And in Vegas, they're kicking the hookers out of places formerly friendly to them. There are social costs involved with junkies and hookers that go beyond police protection, and even in the Netherlands, they've woken up to that fact.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
In Richmond, UK:
http://www.richmond.gov.uk/home/transport_and_streets/road_and_pathway_maintenance/public_conveniences/community_toilet_scheme.htm
the Local Council will give you an annual grant if your shop's staff toilet is opened to the public. To qualify, it has to be free for use, even for non-customers. Pubs which join the scheme have a notice put up outside.
This is cheaper than opening separate public use toilets, and helps the shops and pubs keep their toilets funded.
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
Just gets better and better.
Still, you get the government you deserve.
Yeah, because it's so much better if you let the smack addicts do it anywhere.
I"ve got my qualms with the so-called "war on drugs" too, but I get tired of people blaming things like junkies ruining public toilets on the government, when the fault lies with junkies ruining public toilets. Nobody made that asshole stick a needle in his arm. And unless the guy was born yesterday, I'm pretty sure he knew what he was getting into when he chose to stick that needle in his arm. Everyone pretty much knows what happens to you when you start shooting heroin. So can we have a moritorium on the poor-drug-victim bullshit, please? It's the rest of us that can't do things like, oh, use a public toilet that are the victims, not the junkie. He did this to himself. And if the "war on drugs" goes away tomorrow, and we open thousands of utopian "treatment centers", junkies are still going to do things like ruin public parks... because that's what junkies do.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
a friend of mine who for some reason unknown to me decided to roll a joint in there.
Some unknown reason? Maybe he wanted to get high?
600.000 a year a piece?
Now, what would it really have cost to have a toilet lady in a simple old fashioned public toilet who just cleanes the place, keeps an eye out on the area?
But no, the public toilets are closed, the toilet ladies fired and people pee against building and then we spend years trying to find high-tech solutions.
Say a single toilet lady makes 100k a year, a nice salary indeed for cleaning. That would have allowed 6 people to have a job, more then enough to keep one place staffed 24/7. No need for a 9/11 link or a 15 minute deadline.
Really, there is such a thing as overthinking a problem.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Business owners across the city have been forced to figure out ways to keep drug users and others out of their bathrooms while keeping the toilets open to customers.
One UK town had that problem with drug users. There was a simple solution - they noticed that some restrooms had no problems with druggies even though there was the same population, same level of cleaning and security. The only difference was that the restroom had some rather cheap fluorescent lights of a single light wavelength. While this was adequate for basic hygiene and safety, it made it impossible for drug users to see their veins in order to use needles. As a consequence, they would avoid that particular restroom.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
San Francisco has similar toilets, from JCDecaux. They're ad-supported, plus most of them charge money. JCDecaux, not the city, services them, and they do a relatively good job, which they have to do to keep the advertising contract. The San Francisco experience is that they work fine in the tourist areas and need too much maintenance in the homeless areas. SF gives homeless people a free token; it opens the toilet like coins, but the token comes back out the coin return.
Part of the problem was the insistence that they be wheelchair accessible. JCDeaux installs a smaller version in Paris, which takes up less space on the street (it will fit on most sidewalks), and isn't big enough for prostitution, drug dealing, or sleeping. But in the US, they're forced to install the big model, which is about the size of a parking space.
Palo Alto has two units. Theirs take credit cards. Really.
These things are far more expensive than they should be, costing about $1,000,000 each over 5 years. There's no good reason these things should cost far more than an SUV, but they do. I've seen the mechanism being serviced. It's put together from stock Telemechanique industrial automation components, which is reliable but is designed for one-off applications. If you built a washing machine that way, it would cost about $20,000. These things are engineered like prototypes. They need to be re-engineered for volume production and the cost brought down to under $50,000.
There was nothing at all wrong with the toilets it appears, but a more serious problem with the denizens of Seattle.
The versions in use in Paris work just fine, and have worked so for close to 20 years. Initially there was a (small) problem with people spending too long in there (for whatever reason), but a simple change to the software to open the doors after a reasonable amount of time to do what these were intended for fixed that problem.
The only other adjustment that was made was to reduce the sensitivity of the pressure sensor in the floor so that it registered small children - this after a dumb parent ignored the sign saying that children under 5 had to be accompanied by an adult, the toilet thought it was empty, and began its cleaning cycle.
If I designed them, I'd do two things:
1) I'd sell advertising on the side
2) I'd charge $0.25 for 15 minutes (with no ability to add $0.25 from inside).
Seriously, if you godda drop a duce, are you gonna use a free bathroom, or are you gonna beg borrow and steat a quarter to go to a pay restroom? Now imagine your wife.
Keep in mind these are all psychological, not "real". People will perceive the pay-restroom to be higher quality, better maintained (even if it isn't), and more sanitary.
Adding advertising makes it blend in with the fabric of the street. Right now, those damn things look like space age robots--very imposing.
"Virtures"? No. I said "and really, there are better ways to spend your time and money." That's hardly calling heroin use a virtue.
The use of clean heroin of known strength and purity is rather safe. Stupid - really, really fscking stupid - but safe. A heroin addict using the "good" stuff does much, much less damage to their body than a heavy drinker or a typical cigarette smoker.
The use of adulterated heroin of unknown purity, often using shared needles, is dangerous. People do it because they can't get clean heroin of known strength and purity. They can't get it because it's banned. It's banned because of misinformation like what you are spreading.
Furthermore, the prohibition creates a violent black market, which fuels a great deal of violent crime.
So, yes. When you spread lies about drugs and work toward their prohibition, you are killing people. You have a small share of responsibility for every junkie who dies from a dirty needle or from bad smack, and for every kid shot in a drug deal gone bad, because you helped create the circumstances of their deaths.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood