There are certain things about New York that people who\u2019ve never been\/lived here just refuse to believe when you tell them. The fact that people just throw garbage bags out onto the street. The fact that doing laundry means dragging your clothes down to the local laundromat. And the fact that there are virtually no public toilets.<\/p>\n
There are something like 1,000 public toilets in NYC\u2014the exact number varies depending on your source\u2014which is roughly one for every 8,500 residents, or 11.75 per 100,000 residents. There\u2019s surprisingly little in the way of hard academic research about equivalent numbers for cities worldwide, but the 11.75 per 100k tallies exactly with the conclusions of research conducted earlier this year<\/a> for, um, a toilet company. (There\u2019s some interesting information about the methodology used for that research here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Anyway, the findings put NYC nowhere near the overall top 20 list of cities worldwide, and 21st on the list of major tourist cities\u2014the leader in the latter category is Zurich with 76.5 public toilets per 100k residents, followed by Lisbon with 52.5 and Sydney with 45.0. As far as other US cities go, Salt Lake City is the clear winner with 66.6 (lol) per 100k residents, followed by Honolulu with 56.5 and Denver with 49.2.<\/p>\n On a more empirical basis, anyone can tell you that if you\u2019re out and about in NYC, you\u2019ve had a questionable meal the night before, and you suddenly find that you need to make a mad dash for the nearest facilities, you\u2019d better hope that there\u2019s a Starbucks or McDonald\u2019s nearby, because otherwise you\u2019re very likely to be, ahem, s*it out of luck.<\/p>\n But never fear, because things are changing in Zohran\u2019s Communist Caliphate. That\u2019s right: NYC\u2019s favorite Muslim dictator isn\u2019t just content with tackling the garbage-bags-on-the-street thing by forcing the use of wheelie bins and dumpsters\u2014a violation of Americans\u2019 freedom to just throw things anywhere, I\u2019ll have you know. No, he\u2019s also insisting on dragging the city\u2019s defecation facilities into the 21st century. (Well, maybe the 20th, to be perfectly honest, but you have to start somewhere.)<\/p>\n Specifically, this week Mamdani announced<\/a> the arrival of the first of the 17 solar-powered automated toilets ordered earlier this year as part of a $4m pilot program. Two of these high-tech crappers are already up and running, with the rest due to arrive soon. But wait, what\u2019s the solar power for?<\/p>\n Well, if you\u2019ve used modern public toilets in any other major city around the world, you can probably guess the answer, but if not: these new toilets have a time limit for users. Specifically, they kick you out after 10 minutes. As per Gothamist<\/a>, when the time limit expires, a bilingual message in English and Spanish informs the user that the door is about to open, and then\u2026 well, the door opens, \u201cexposing the user to the public. If someone still refuses to leave the futuristic bathroom, workers \u2026 will get an alert to go check things out in person.\u201d<\/p>\n And honestly, that\u2019s pretty gentle. In my home city of Melbourne, the newest public toilets don\u2019t just flush themselves and open the door after 10 minutes; the entire interior then cleans itself by blasting water from a bunch of jets located at various locations around the walls. Unsurprisingly, this proves a pretty strong disincentive against overstaying one\u2019s welcome.<\/p>\n Anyway, in the grand scheme of things, 17 new toilets is a drop in the cistern, but it\u2019s a start. If you\u2019re wondering where to find the new facilities, there\u2019s a map<\/a> on the Mayor\u2019s Facebook page, and for a more comprehensive map of all NYC\u2019s public toilets, check out the invaluable NYRestroom.com<\/a>. You\u2019re very welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are certain things about New York that people who\u2019ve never been\/lived here just refuse to believe when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64,38964,82],"class_list":["post-351154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-public-bathrooms","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}