Seattle Flushes $5M High-Tech Toilets 433
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."
Seattle, You're Doin' It Wrong (Score:2, Informative)
1. Legalize drugs and prostitution.
2. ???
3. PROFIT!!!
Re:Meanwhile, 3 hours by car away... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm guessing you have never been to the downtown east side in Vancouver.
They are not even close to decriminalized. Just because they have one safe injection site does not mean that the police won't arrest you for dealing. It also does not mean they won't arrest you if they catch you using drugs in public.
The reality of the downtown east side is that injection drug use is so rampant that the police couldn't arrest everyone who did it even if they wanted to. The single safe injection site isn't even close to large enough and neither are the detox centers. The result is that the dug users still shoot up in the alleys.
Re:Meanwhile, 3 hours by car away... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Meanwhile, 3 hours by car away... (Score:2, Informative)
At least in the United States, most drug offenses are caught at the city level. While things like marijuana are considered dangerous drugs and can be prosecuted at all levels, there is a significant amount of discretion that can be applied to each police department. In Seattle and several other cities the laws were amended so that enforcement of the personal use of marijuana is the lowest law enforcement priority. Smoking a joint is still illegal in Seattle, but that doesn't stop public events like Hempfest from having massive outdoor stoner parties.
Re:Meanwhile, 3 hours by car away... (Score:5, Informative)
There was an article on this in the NY Times a couple of weeks ago. In addition to drug use and prostitution, people would leave so much trash in the toilets that the automatic scrubbers had to be disabled or they jammed on the trash... and as a result, the toilets became so disgusting that even the druggies avoided them.
""I'm not going to lie: I used to smoke crack in there," said one homeless woman, Veronyka Cordner, nodding toward the toilet behind Pike Place Market. "But I won't even go inside that thing now. It's disgusting.""
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/us/17toilets.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=seattle%20public%20toilet&st=cse&oref=slogin [nytimes.com]
IMO, the reason this works in other countries but not in the U.S. has nothing to do with our "puritanical mindset": instead, it's because Americans have no concept of public common space. We feel that everything on Earth is for our exclusive personal use until someone tries to stop us.
Re:Just Remember... (Score:1, Informative)
Read the original article from 2004 (link in head). These DID open after 15 mins. Apparently drug users and prostitutes managed anyway, and also managed to vandalize the cleaning mechanisms so they no longer worked.
Also read the politician's promises in 2004 that this would not be a problem and could easily be prevented.
Re:Meanwhile, 3 hours by car away... (Score:4, Informative)
That's an interesting question.
Last I heard (and I have seen evidence of this) is that Wal-Mart effectively has an official company policy that RVs and similar vehicles are allowed to park in their parking lots overnight, even for extended periods. Most other businesses would call the cops or chase the RVs away.
The rationale for Wal-Mart? The people in that camper parked in the parking lot are likely going to go for the most convenient supply shopping available.
Re:Just Remember... (Score:5, Informative)
The reason they can't open the doors after a couple of minutes has to do with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). At least that is according to Norman Augustine in Augustine's Laws. By law the toilets must be accessible to handicapped persons. It can take a handicapped person a long time to get there business done.
Re:Meanwhile, 3 hours by car away... (Score:5, Informative)
Another reason it fails in the U.S. is that it has a much larger homeless and mentally ill population roaming the streets of its major cities than just about any other first-world country I can name.
Re:$5,000,000? (Score:3, Informative)
Like so many others, you didn't RTFA, it seems.
The $5 mio. was not the initial price-tag. It was the accumulated cost, mostly of maintainance, over a period of four years. So it's not development costs, but maintainance, cleaning (the self-clean broke down), etc.
Re:Just Remember... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just Remember... (Score:4, Informative)
Please RTFA. Among other details:
a) The self-cleaning broke down somewhere during the 4 years
b) It already has a time-limit (15 minutes) after which it simply opens the door
Re:Meanwhile, 3 hours by car away... (Score:4, Informative)
Though the 'access gratuit' sanisettes in Paris are only open from 06:00 to 22:00, and it is not (or was not when I was there a couple of months ago) uncommon to see them out of use.
Re:Just Remember... (Score:3, Informative)
You know wrong about alcohol. It is pretty difficult to get physically addicted to alcohol (I should know), but it is most definately possible. Part of the pain of a hangover is withdrawal symptoms, which is why hair of the dog can be effective. It is also, as far as I know, the only drug which can kill you with withdrawal symptoms. Yup, that's right - hardcore alcoholics can't just go cold turkey, because the withdrawal symptoms include death. It is truly a nasty nasty drug if you actually get addicted.
Re:Meanwhile, 3 hours by car away... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Automatic toilets (Score:3, Informative)
San Francisco has similar toilets, from JCDecaux [jcdecauxna.com]. 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.
Re:Meanwhile, 3 hours by car away... (Score:3, Informative)
Local decriminalization typically means that the cops simply don't go out of their way to uncover and investigate certain crimes, regardless of whether or not they're federal, state or local ordinance violations.
Just for instance, the San Mateo county sheriff's office recently raided a home poker tournament [examiner.com]. I guess they weren't interested in prosecuting prostitution [sfgate.com].
The problem wasn't the toilets (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Meanwhile, 3 hours by car away... (Score:4, Informative)
The term used by RV'ers is "outrigging", living out of their camper/RV without hooking up to city water/power (some of the rigs are nice, but occasionally you get someone with a 1972 Winnebago with dry rot).
However, not all Wal-Marts are welcoming them with open arms these days. I've seen two with more restrictive policies, one banning them outright, while another has sections of their parking lots that are off limits to outriggers.
From personal observation, however, it seems to me that if you could afford a running RV (you can easily get one in adequate operating condition for less than $2,000), you could afford a spot at a campground for $400 a month. Hardly what any reasonable person would consider exhorbitant. They aren't too bad either, you get sewage disposal, fresh water, electricity and even cable in some places as part of the bargain. While many have restrictions on how long you can stay, if you have a good record with the owners, you probably could renew pretty quickly.
I spent a few months living out of a 18' trailer myself, and while running the water heater was a pain in the butt on cold mornings, it was fairly comfortable. Your mileage may vary.
Re:Just Remember... (Score:4, Informative)
that that is the absolute dumbest thing I have ever heard anyone say in my entire life.
You must not get out much then.
Simply speaking, there's two types of addiction. Physiological and Psychological. Physiological is where actual changes to body chemistry occur, and bad things can happen when you withdraw. A severe alcohol addict can experience delirium tremens. Heroin can have some very bad side effects from withdrawal.
Then you have Psychological addictions. These are the people who get addicted to gambling, world of warcraft, the internet, etc... Not to say that they don't crave their addiction, but it doesn't have the body factor that Physiological does.
On the topic of the toilets - well, I'd consider them an experiment that didn't work out as well as they hoped.
Re:Just Remember... (Score:4, Informative)
Frankly, your complete lack of understanding of the difference between physical and psychological addiction is astounding. Also, it is ignorance like yours which keeps a drug that is no more (maybe less) harmful than alcohol, and possibly beneficial to a great many people, illegal.
been there done that (Score:1, Informative)
I live in Seattle and work 2 blocks from one of those toilets. I never used the thing. It is about a 20 minute wait to get in one and they are installed in the highest populated 'homeless camp public parks'. Seattle does have a lot of homeless. I live in Seattle about 5 miles north of dowtown. Just outside of my neighborhood we have 1 guy who has lived on the porch of a state gov't building for over 2 years. Plus 2 people living in a van just outside our window and yesterday I spotted a guy in our carport eating some old meat loaf out of the dumpster. This is in a neighborhood where a house costs about $500K.