> "They have been installed on a sexist proposition: men cannot control themselves (from the bladder point of view) and so all of society has to adapt," Gwendoline Coipeault of the feminist group Femmes Solidaires tells the news service. "The public space must be transformed to cause them minimum discomfort."
They need to bring back flogging for public urination and littering.
It's really a minimum adaptation of society, for the benefit of everyone: fewer urine patches in their city. If it works, and everyone benefits, why should people care that one feminist thinks it's sexist?
...how about free public toilets, which will solve the actual problem?
I get the impression that you misunderstood the parent. Installing toilets would solve the problem without being sexist. The plan of installing urinals does seem rather sexist, doesn't it?
I mean, it appears to be saying, "oh well, boys can't hold it" or "women don't (or can't) drink". Aren't those sexist statements?
It sure sounds to me like it's reinforcing a weird culture of men not doing any planning and feeling entitled to piss wherever it's convenient for them.
Public urination has several causes: 1) People not caring enough not to; 2) People can't find a public restroom and they have to pee; 3) People can't afford to use the available restrooms.
The first of those could possibly be handled with threats and punishment; the other two would only be minimally affected by that.
Yes, it's sexist to only provide facilities for men—whatever the argument. I don't disagree! But corporal punishment for urination, as rayiner was suggesting, without providing free public toilets... that's just cruel.
But corporal punishment for urination, as rayiner was suggesting, without providing free public toilets... that's just cruel.
I don't think the problem is caused by vast numbers if underprivileged homeless people. It sounds like it's caused by irresponsible, indifferent young men. There doesn't appear to be a widespread problem of women urinating in the streets.
It's perfectly valid to conclude that the problem is a lack of punishment and shaming of the unwanted behavior.
So, let's say your new "Whip the Pissers Act" gets signed into law. Congratulations, there are now public floggings of irresponsible, indifferent young men, and many of them do change their ways. But there are also public floggings of the homeless. Awesome.
Or does your law somehow codify "indifferent and irresponsible" as a condition of the crime?
Just like with any other crime, the prosecution or sentencing authority could take account of mitigating circumstances. We don’t get rid of laws against speeding because sometimes people are rushing to the hospital.
> Yes, because beating people will make them suddenly not need to pee. >_>
It works in Singapore! It's not like France is a poor country where people have inadequate access to toilet facilities. To the extent there is a problem it is cultural, and punishment can correct culture.
If you take Psychology 101 you’ll learn that punishment very rarely dissuades people from doing things society doesn’t want them to do, especially basic bodily functions. Maybe we should design cities such that people don’t feel the need to pee in public.
I’ll add a little anecdote to this too. I was drunk at 4 AM in Hamburg, Germany once (as you do), but because Germans love absolute change and using cash, I happened to not have enough coins to use one of the plentiful pay-to-pee bathrooms. So what do I do? I find the nearest secluded doorway and narrowly avoid pissing myself.
For all of the problems of American cities, free restrooms is something they got right. If you don’t make it difficult to use a bathroom, people won’t be forced to pee in public like I was.
Some places do have free toilets everywhere but still people pee outside on the street. Barceloneta in Barcelona comes to mind as one of the the places like that.
There are free toilets in paris already, but they are few and far in between. Also their automatic cleaning cycle is very long. The most ridiculous is that the toilets are paid in the train stations though.
Exposure leads to traffic leads which leads to sales is the main reason for why it is mutually beneficial usually. You stop in a place you usually wouldn't bother with just for the restroom and start to be familiar with it and remember it.
Take another extreme - allowing people in only if they will definitely buy something in the store. It reduces shoplifting and traffic that doesn't buy anything! Except that would drastically reduce sales from lack of people who haven't already decided in addition to being put off by it. The "buy something" policies strike me as similarly pennywise and pound foolish.
It depends on your clientele. If you're in an area where everyone is well behaved, then you might be right.
If you're in a place with tons of mentally disabled folk or other type of people that don't respect public areas, then it's going to cost you more than it helps you.
Also, it could be more headache than its worth if you're at a big tourist spot where the probability of someone buying something is not high enough compared to the enormous amount of people who will want to use a bathroom.
All Starbucks now by official policy allow access to their facilities. Previously it was convention to allow people who asked politely, but occadionally you might have had to have a receipt.
That said, by and large sny national chain will allow use of their facilities.
I can't find anything that says gas stations or any business is required to provide bathrooms to people who aren't paying them. All I can search is that restrooms must be public (which I take to mean as not just for employees):
Other laws usually require dining establishments to have public restrooms; what this mostly does is prevent using restrooms that involve passing through the prep area to satisfy those requirements.
Tangent: I love highway rest stops and I think they are one more example to the middle class of what government can do (along with, you know, the Interstate system). Not all government is evil, Aunt Sally.
Now to your point: Almost all businesses in the US allow people to use the restroom without buying merchandise or food, unless marked specifically. The places that don't allow it are typically in high traffic tourist areas that already have public facilities, or otherwise have a homeless problem that has them needing to keep their facilities from being abused.
I don't think anyone argues that it's impossible for the government to do something people want. A better question is if they do manage to produce a desired result, is it worth the cost?
This shouldn't be downvoted. Restrooms within U.S. urban centers are hard to find, for patrons only, if they have public restrooms at all. Seattle, NYC, Atlanta, San Diego, L.A...all the same. There's a reason people urinate behind dumpsters.
10 years ago on NYE at Times Square, people were literally dropping squat or pissing in bottles in the middle of a televised street for lack of anywhere else to do it. I've been desperate enough to have to to it myself.
Somewhere in the suburbs? Sure, just stop at a McDonald's, a public park, a mall, or any number of places with toilet access. But cities themselves largely lack them.
Time square was also cordoned off during New Years celebrations I believe. Why they didn't include sufficient portapotties within the perimeter but out of central show areas is beyond me.
Even worse, the way they had security set up was that herded everybody into corrals after frisking them. No re-entry into your pen was permitted.
There were portapotties stationed up and down the strip...outside of the corrals. If you dared to use them, you were done for the night-- you couldn't get back into your pen unless you evaded the cops and hopped a fence.
>>Restrooms within U.S. urban centers are hard to find, for patrons only
Like you said, find a restaurant, or a Dunking Donuts and buy something...or just sneak in. Look at the menu up as you're thinking and then run to the bathroom. At the places I usually is it I don't feel guilty, if I ate there yesterday I paid for today's bathroom use :)
Public bathrooms are a lot of trouble with cleaning, crime etc and usually are closed at nighttime in parks too. Tech can mitigate some of those concerns but still...
Gas stations, fast food restaurants and large chain stores (Walmart, grocery stores, etc.) are all effectively free public toilets, at least in the regions where I've lived. I imagine they legally have the right to limit access to customers, but I can't remember ever seeing it done in practice.
In San Diego at least public toilets get used by the homeless and drug users so voters asked for them to be removed. Then the homeless migrate to using fast food toilets, now they are getting keypads, keyed-locks, tokens, or worse having the code on the receipt so you have to buy something first even if you need to really use the restroom first. Frustrating since I am diabetic and use the restroom a lot.
The article is talking about Paris, so you'd have to compare it to access to bathrooms in places like NYC or SF, where most businesses do restrict access to customers. I think Starbucks changed it recently so anyone can use their restroom, but that makes me not want to use their restrooms.
As a suburbanite I was confused by the Starbucks bathroom kerfuffle because I didn't know city locations had keypads/locks on their bathroom doors.
At every Starbucks I've ever been to out here there's never been a question that you could just walk in and use the bathroom. Same with McDonalds. Frequently these places have a back door you can enter and the bathrooms are right there, and nobody even sees you go in.
> For example this article talks about the situation in the New York. Where there are... 20 public toilets. And they're owned... by the French.
That's not what the article says. It says nothing about the total number of public toilets except that it is small and locals have mapped them out.
The 20 is a specific batch of pay street toilets that were delivered and planned for installation, but only four of which were actually fully installed, one was pending hookups, and the other 15 are still in warehouse.
And they are apparently owned by the city (not the French) but operated by a French contractor.
More to the point, the article notes that New York is unusual in its lack of public toilets, not typical of the US.
Good point. I can't think of a situation where I've seen a public toilet that exists for it's own sake. But I can think of many situations where toilets are part of otherwise publicly owned facilities - like mass transit depots, visitor centers, highway rest stops, etc. So I guess the supply of public toilets becomes a function of the amount of general public facilities in the area. Which is to say that your experience will vary depending on your context - probably just rural vs. urban.
Wikipedia (and my personal experience) disagrees:
"Pay toilets are especially common in Continental Europe."
"In the United States, pay toilets became much less common from the 1970s, when they came under attack from feminists as well as from the plumbing industry."
Rest stops along freeways in the U.S. are almost always free. Gas stations and restaurants and convenience stores will sometimes have a sign that restrooms are "For customers only" but there is almost never a charge specifically to use the restroom. In Europe, driving through the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and France, almost all restrooms where you didn't pay to enter the area required a separate fee. I remember specifically being surprised at the fee required to enter the restroom at a McDonald's in Europe.
> Free public toilets are everywhere! Rest stops on the interstate, public parks, even fast food places and stores will let you use the bathroom...
But apart from parks those are places that people have to go to because there aren't any public toilets!
We rest stops, public parks, and fast food in Europe as well. I thought the point of the conversation was about actual public bathrooms, not just private bathrooms people would let you use. Public parks are the only public ones you listed.
> But apart from parks those are places that people have to go to because there aren't any public toilets!
Seems like you have it backward. There aren't public toilets because people can go to SO many other places for a bathroom.
> public parks are the only public ones you listed.
I only listed 2. Public parks and rest stops. Rest stops are public.
I can go on if you'd like... government buildings, libraries, bus terminals, train terminals, beaches, malls, pretty much any business that lets the general public walk in its doors... hotels...
I too hate the idea of paid toilets in public buildings like train stations in Europe, but dense, non-car-focused cities in the US like NYC or San Francisco also have public restrooms few and far between. Most fast-food places require you to make a purchase to use them. Starbucks did recently drop this policy, the tradeoff being that their restroom now have even longer lines and tend to be nastier.
A timely piece from the BBC about the reduction in toilet provision in the UK over the last few years. The tldr is that public spending on toilets is discretionary and councils have cut spending there since it's an easy target when needing to cut their budgets.
Yea, I noticed this same thing (the fee for public toilets) on a trip to Bolivia earlier this year. It seems the same as government agencies that split out the cost of their downstream credit card processing fees and optionally add them to the price of their product (like paying your water bill for instance). So rather than doing the most efficient thing by enabling online processing building in the transaction cost, the consumers are all incentivized to stick with paper checks and the water department carries on assuming that managing the incoming paper checks have no associated processing cost because the cost is internal and they don't have a third party charging them.
This seems to be more common in the public sector. It happens in the private sector but, in my experience, when it does it is with small mom and pop companies that are similarly incapable of seeing the big picture.
It depends on the country. France has extensive coverage of free toilets. Like the article says they have the "self-cleaning" toilets (they're actually very disgusting), many public parks have staffed(!) free toilets and so on. On the other hand in Netherlands you'd be lucky to find a free toilet even in food establishments.
This is both hilarious and very useful. Parisian culture leans toward leisurely café sipping, which means there aren't a lot of Starbucks-type places where one can stop quickly to pee and grab a drink or snack. Current options are to pay for access to a little cabin-style bathroom (even those aren't always easy to find), or line up for a place that permits bathroom use without essentially renting a table for an hour (the line for a bathroom at McDonald's on the Champs Élysée can stretch out the door)... or pee in an alley or subway.
I'll be interested to see how this is received by Parisians.
I thought that was related to the nerve gas attacks on the subway and deciding they would rather have litter sweeped up than standing cans which may hide bombs.
> Parisian culture leans toward leisurely café sipping, which means there aren't a lot of Starbucks-type places where one can stop quickly to pee and grab a drink or snack.
Wait, what?
There are restrooms in every single café in my (northern Parisian) neighbourhood. If you are sipping café there, or buying it to go, then you are a customer and are allowed access to the restroom.
I have no idea what 'renting a table for an hour' means in relation to going to a café, but your view of how life in Paris works seems very seriously off.
It might just be me, though -- I am unable to understand how other grown adults in this thread (not parent comment, other posts) can think that they are entitled to bladder release for free outside of their homes.
Many cafés do not serve coffee à emporter and do not have paper cups. If you stop by PAUL or la Brioche Dorée or some such chain, sure, but they are not as ubiquitous as Starbucks or Dunkin are in the U.S.
Additionally, many of the places that do sell food or drink to-go are in kiosks. If I stop to buy a cup of vin chaud or something, chances are the vendor won't even have a toilet for customers.
My view of life in Paris compared to life in the U.S. comes from living in both places. It may not match your experience, but you are unqualified to tell me whether my description is "very off" from my experience.
In any case, your defensiveness is at odds with the fact that some people apparently do think this is a problem. If people can pee in any café they stop in at for a cuppa, what's the point of these uritrottoirs? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> Many cafés do not serve coffee à emporter and do not have paper cups.
Apologies for contradicting you on the sole basis of personal experience, but you are, again, in my own experience, very wrong: you really have to find yourself in the poshest streets of Paris (with only salons de thé in them) not to find at least one café that serves coffee to go (in paper cups), hence my surprise at your point about restroom access.
I do not know enough of the USA to compare, but basically, you can get coffee and pee every 500m or less in Paris (for various prices going from more-than-reasonable to perfectly-obscene).
> If I stop to buy a cup of vin chaud or something, chances are the [kiosk] vendor won't even have a toilet for customers.
Will it be proof of my own defensiveness if I mention that kiosks in the US are also unlikely to have restrooms? (Unless those I saw in Phillie and NYC this winter are outliers.)
> My view of life in Paris compared to life in the U.S. comes from living in both places. It may not match your experience, but you are unqualified to tell me whether my description is "very off" from my experience.
Apologies if you felt that I was denying your experience of whatever country or city. You are absolutely correct: your Parisian experience does not match mine, which is what "seems very off" meant in my original comment.
> If people can pee in any café they stop in at for a cuppa, what's the point of these uritrottoirs? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As mentioned in the article, the uritrottoirs is to stop people peeing on the sidewalk. What those people will be peeing is not coffee but beer from cans bought in grocery shops or supermarkets.
If you have lived in Paris and been to Canal Saint-Martin, bords de Seine or equivalent places, you know exactly who those uritrottoirs are aimed at. That target population does not intersect much with the clientele of cafés.
Apologies for the long post and sorry again if my wording offended you.
http://uritrottoir.com that marketing of the guy taking a selfie while using one. We have free robotoilets here but drug addicts cover the floors in used needles and other piles of trash that clog the autoclean ergo alleys reeking of urine all summer persist.
Places with the needle problems (like SF) should bite the bullet and provide sharps containers that are maintained by public employees.
It's simply insane to ignore the problem posed by the kilotons of used needles laying around everywhere, and they're a public health menace, so the government should take responsibility for the issue.
Portland did that and some locals threw a fit. It’s a great idea though, there are legitimate reasons someone would need to dispose of a needle anyways.
We (San Francisco) do have them. Some people don't like them, and there are ongoing fights about that. Generally speaking, "the government" here is trying to "take responsibility" like you ask. It is a certain segment of the population that you should be taking issue with.
I'm not singling you out, but a personal pet-peeve of mine is this "us vs. government" thing. You, the reader, are a part of your government. Pretending like government should be like a restaurant and service you is a category error that causes lots of unnecessary problems while not solving real ones. Take responsibility, indeed.)
Netherlands has public urinals in some places (Dam Square in Amsterdam, for example), the sky didn't fall or anything. They are a little unsightly but younger drunken me certainly appreciated their presence.
I wish there was some equivalent to these things suitable for women though, it isn't fair that we have all the fun :)
Before reading the article my first thought was that there was not adequate public restrooms, but its mentioned they've already added 400. It would be interesting to know if the incident rate dropped after adding them, and if so then maybe they need to add more. I'm not sure how much area the 400 had to cover, but it might not have been enough.
400 for a large city like Paris isn't that much and discoverability is an issue. They're fairly densely packed in some areas [0] I'm guessing near restaurant/bar heavy areas but fairly sparse out side of that.
This is a return of the 19 century « vespasiennes » (public pissoirs) that were removed partly because they were detourned by men for other purposes. By that time homosexuality was frowned upon. The new version take less space but also offer less privacy; it’s a weird choice in my opinion.
European business culture also contributes in some small part, so given enough growth it would have eventually been a problem anyways, but it was exacerbated by importing tens of thousands of primitive terrorists.
I'm french, I live near Paris and very often walk in Paris for various reasons (shopping, etc)
The BIG problem is that the automated public (and free, which was not the case before) toilets are NOT numerous enough (400 only according to the article, what a joke!), you have to _search_ for them, even in the very popular -and touristic- areas where I usually roam. But the other, and far worse, problem is that they are SLOOOOOOOOOW!!!! Obviously only one person can use the toilet at a time, then when they exit, the toilet auto-cleans itself, which takes FOREVER, and I mean a good couple of minutes, maybe more. Imagine a line of ten people in front of you (it happens)... You'll have a 30 minutes wait, if not more!
I won't insist on the fact that after the auto-cleaning the toilets are still (understandably) wet on the floor and the toilet seat, which is not the most pleasant thing. But I agree that it's not an easy thing to do. I will also pass quickly on the fact that sometimes you find used needles (left by drug addicts) in the hand washing bowl...
In some of the most touristic places (remember that France is the most visited country in the world, and Paris draws an incredible number of visitors, especially during the holidays), you can see ONE or TWO toilets, and that's it, for thousands of people! That's a total joke.
As for those new urinals, who would want to use those? I don't want to pee in front of everybody, thank you! There are plenty of possible more secluded spots.
The idea of adding more toilets is one thing, and more efficient (and less cumbersome) models compared to the current ones would be a VERY welcome idea, but this solution is in my opinion not well studied. Plus it does not help women (~50% of the public) who also need to use toilets...
And it would also be good if toilets were available in the subway! That's where I've seen the most people take "wild pees" (usually again a wall in the stations), it's the WORST place, it's disgusting.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] thread> "They have been installed on a sexist proposition: men cannot control themselves (from the bladder point of view) and so all of society has to adapt," Gwendoline Coipeault of the feminist group Femmes Solidaires tells the news service. "The public space must be transformed to cause them minimum discomfort."
They need to bring back flogging for public urination and littering.
(Will you also advocate removal of trash cans, and beat people for littering?)
...how about free public toilets, which will solve the actual problem?
I get the impression that you misunderstood the parent. Installing toilets would solve the problem without being sexist. The plan of installing urinals does seem rather sexist, doesn't it?
I mean, it appears to be saying, "oh well, boys can't hold it" or "women don't (or can't) drink". Aren't those sexist statements?
It sure sounds to me like it's reinforcing a weird culture of men not doing any planning and feeling entitled to piss wherever it's convenient for them.
The first of those could possibly be handled with threats and punishment; the other two would only be minimally affected by that.
Yes, it's sexist to only provide facilities for men—whatever the argument. I don't disagree! But corporal punishment for urination, as rayiner was suggesting, without providing free public toilets... that's just cruel.
I don't think the problem is caused by vast numbers if underprivileged homeless people. It sounds like it's caused by irresponsible, indifferent young men. There doesn't appear to be a widespread problem of women urinating in the streets.
It's perfectly valid to conclude that the problem is a lack of punishment and shaming of the unwanted behavior.
Or does your law somehow codify "indifferent and irresponsible" as a condition of the crime?
It works in Singapore! It's not like France is a poor country where people have inadequate access to toilet facilities. To the extent there is a problem it is cultural, and punishment can correct culture.
I’ll add a little anecdote to this too. I was drunk at 4 AM in Hamburg, Germany once (as you do), but because Germans love absolute change and using cash, I happened to not have enough coins to use one of the plentiful pay-to-pee bathrooms. So what do I do? I find the nearest secluded doorway and narrowly avoid pissing myself.
For all of the problems of American cities, free restrooms is something they got right. If you don’t make it difficult to use a bathroom, people won’t be forced to pee in public like I was.
Free app controlled urinals that play curated digital advertisements in front of you while you pee.
Last time I was in EU was 10 years ago but tried to use a toilet in a bar and got yelled at unless I bought something first.
Even in the US you cannot just walk into every bars and restaurants and use their toilets for free...
Take another extreme - allowing people in only if they will definitely buy something in the store. It reduces shoplifting and traffic that doesn't buy anything! Except that would drastically reduce sales from lack of people who haven't already decided in addition to being put off by it. The "buy something" policies strike me as similarly pennywise and pound foolish.
If you're in a place with tons of mentally disabled folk or other type of people that don't respect public areas, then it's going to cost you more than it helps you.
Also, it could be more headache than its worth if you're at a big tourist spot where the probability of someone buying something is not high enough compared to the enormous amount of people who will want to use a bathroom.
That said, by and large sny national chain will allow use of their facilities.
Gas stations are required by the state to have publicly accessible bathrooms (and have also long decided this is good business).
Pretty much any place with seating will have bathrooms. Of course many will try to restrict them to customers.
https://www.cga.ct.gov/2006/rpt/2006-R-0739.htm
But at least in Florida it seems they can be restricted to paying customers:
http://www.nbc-2.com/story/25446355/good-question-restaurant...
Now to your point: Almost all businesses in the US allow people to use the restroom without buying merchandise or food, unless marked specifically. The places that don't allow it are typically in high traffic tourist areas that already have public facilities, or otherwise have a homeless problem that has them needing to keep their facilities from being abused.
10 years ago on NYE at Times Square, people were literally dropping squat or pissing in bottles in the middle of a televised street for lack of anywhere else to do it. I've been desperate enough to have to to it myself.
Somewhere in the suburbs? Sure, just stop at a McDonald's, a public park, a mall, or any number of places with toilet access. But cities themselves largely lack them.
There were portapotties stationed up and down the strip...outside of the corrals. If you dared to use them, you were done for the night-- you couldn't get back into your pen unless you evaded the cops and hopped a fence.
Like you said, find a restaurant, or a Dunking Donuts and buy something...or just sneak in. Look at the menu up as you're thinking and then run to the bathroom. At the places I usually is it I don't feel guilty, if I ate there yesterday I paid for today's bathroom use :)
Public bathrooms are a lot of trouble with cleaning, crime etc and usually are closed at nighttime in parks too. Tech can mitigate some of those concerns but still...
What? McDonald's are pretty much everywhere in Oregon
For example this article talks about the situation in the New York. Where there are... 20 public toilets. And they're owned... by the French.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/nyregion/with-few-public-...
This article recommends people go begging to hotels because there are so few public toilets.
https://www.thrillist.com/lifestyle/new-york/best-public-res...
But I've never been asked to pay to use a bathroom in Europe.
Otherwise what's this discussion about? Do people think restaurants and shops in Europe don't have toilets as well?
At every Starbucks I've ever been to out here there's never been a question that you could just walk in and use the bathroom. Same with McDonalds. Frequently these places have a back door you can enter and the bathrooms are right there, and nobody even sees you go in.
That's not what the article says. It says nothing about the total number of public toilets except that it is small and locals have mapped them out.
The 20 is a specific batch of pay street toilets that were delivered and planned for installation, but only four of which were actually fully installed, one was pending hookups, and the other 15 are still in warehouse.
And they are apparently owned by the city (not the French) but operated by a French contractor.
More to the point, the article notes that New York is unusual in its lack of public toilets, not typical of the US.
"In the United States, pay toilets became much less common from the 1970s, when they came under attack from feminists as well as from the plumbing industry."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_toilet
Rest stops along freeways in the U.S. are almost always free. Gas stations and restaurants and convenience stores will sometimes have a sign that restrooms are "For customers only" but there is almost never a charge specifically to use the restroom. In Europe, driving through the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and France, almost all restrooms where you didn't pay to enter the area required a separate fee. I remember specifically being surprised at the fee required to enter the restroom at a McDonald's in Europe.
But apart from parks those are places that people have to go to because there aren't any public toilets!
We rest stops, public parks, and fast food in Europe as well. I thought the point of the conversation was about actual public bathrooms, not just private bathrooms people would let you use. Public parks are the only public ones you listed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rest_area#United_States
Seems like you have it backward. There aren't public toilets because people can go to SO many other places for a bathroom.
> public parks are the only public ones you listed.
I only listed 2. Public parks and rest stops. Rest stops are public.
I can go on if you'd like... government buildings, libraries, bus terminals, train terminals, beaches, malls, pretty much any business that lets the general public walk in its doors... hotels...
A timely piece from the BBC about the reduction in toilet provision in the UK over the last few years. The tldr is that public spending on toilets is discretionary and councils have cut spending there since it's an easy target when needing to cut their budgets.
This seems to be more common in the public sector. It happens in the private sector but, in my experience, when it does it is with small mom and pop companies that are similarly incapable of seeing the big picture.
I'll be interested to see how this is received by Parisians.
Wait, what?
There are restrooms in every single café in my (northern Parisian) neighbourhood. If you are sipping café there, or buying it to go, then you are a customer and are allowed access to the restroom.
I have no idea what 'renting a table for an hour' means in relation to going to a café, but your view of how life in Paris works seems very seriously off.
It might just be me, though -- I am unable to understand how other grown adults in this thread (not parent comment, other posts) can think that they are entitled to bladder release for free outside of their homes.
Additionally, many of the places that do sell food or drink to-go are in kiosks. If I stop to buy a cup of vin chaud or something, chances are the vendor won't even have a toilet for customers.
My view of life in Paris compared to life in the U.S. comes from living in both places. It may not match your experience, but you are unqualified to tell me whether my description is "very off" from my experience.
In any case, your defensiveness is at odds with the fact that some people apparently do think this is a problem. If people can pee in any café they stop in at for a cuppa, what's the point of these uritrottoirs? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Apologies for contradicting you on the sole basis of personal experience, but you are, again, in my own experience, very wrong: you really have to find yourself in the poshest streets of Paris (with only salons de thé in them) not to find at least one café that serves coffee to go (in paper cups), hence my surprise at your point about restroom access.
I do not know enough of the USA to compare, but basically, you can get coffee and pee every 500m or less in Paris (for various prices going from more-than-reasonable to perfectly-obscene).
> If I stop to buy a cup of vin chaud or something, chances are the [kiosk] vendor won't even have a toilet for customers.
Will it be proof of my own defensiveness if I mention that kiosks in the US are also unlikely to have restrooms? (Unless those I saw in Phillie and NYC this winter are outliers.)
> My view of life in Paris compared to life in the U.S. comes from living in both places. It may not match your experience, but you are unqualified to tell me whether my description is "very off" from my experience.
Apologies if you felt that I was denying your experience of whatever country or city. You are absolutely correct: your Parisian experience does not match mine, which is what "seems very off" meant in my original comment.
> If people can pee in any café they stop in at for a cuppa, what's the point of these uritrottoirs? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As mentioned in the article, the uritrottoirs is to stop people peeing on the sidewalk. What those people will be peeing is not coffee but beer from cans bought in grocery shops or supermarkets.
If you have lived in Paris and been to Canal Saint-Martin, bords de Seine or equivalent places, you know exactly who those uritrottoirs are aimed at. That target population does not intersect much with the clientele of cafés.
Apologies for the long post and sorry again if my wording offended you.
It's simply insane to ignore the problem posed by the kilotons of used needles laying around everywhere, and they're a public health menace, so the government should take responsibility for the issue.
I'm not singling you out, but a personal pet-peeve of mine is this "us vs. government" thing. You, the reader, are a part of your government. Pretending like government should be like a restaurant and service you is a category error that causes lots of unnecessary problems while not solving real ones. Take responsibility, indeed.)
I wish there was some equivalent to these things suitable for women though, it isn't fair that we have all the fun :)
Edit: There's even ones that come up out of the ground at night!
[0] https://www.paris.fr/services-et-infos-pratiques/environneme...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pissoir
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattles-5-million...
less privacy as a design choice seems to be very deliberate
(Twitter tells me that it is because of immigration from the 3rd world.)
European business culture also contributes in some small part, so given enough growth it would have eventually been a problem anyways, but it was exacerbated by importing tens of thousands of primitive terrorists.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The BIG problem is that the automated public (and free, which was not the case before) toilets are NOT numerous enough (400 only according to the article, what a joke!), you have to _search_ for them, even in the very popular -and touristic- areas where I usually roam. But the other, and far worse, problem is that they are SLOOOOOOOOOW!!!! Obviously only one person can use the toilet at a time, then when they exit, the toilet auto-cleans itself, which takes FOREVER, and I mean a good couple of minutes, maybe more. Imagine a line of ten people in front of you (it happens)... You'll have a 30 minutes wait, if not more!
I won't insist on the fact that after the auto-cleaning the toilets are still (understandably) wet on the floor and the toilet seat, which is not the most pleasant thing. But I agree that it's not an easy thing to do. I will also pass quickly on the fact that sometimes you find used needles (left by drug addicts) in the hand washing bowl...
In some of the most touristic places (remember that France is the most visited country in the world, and Paris draws an incredible number of visitors, especially during the holidays), you can see ONE or TWO toilets, and that's it, for thousands of people! That's a total joke.
As for those new urinals, who would want to use those? I don't want to pee in front of everybody, thank you! There are plenty of possible more secluded spots.
The idea of adding more toilets is one thing, and more efficient (and less cumbersome) models compared to the current ones would be a VERY welcome idea, but this solution is in my opinion not well studied. Plus it does not help women (~50% of the public) who also need to use toilets...
And it would also be good if toilets were available in the subway! That's where I've seen the most people take "wild pees" (usually again a wall in the stations), it's the WORST place, it's disgusting.
https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=638512558
Archived copy (with photo):
https://archive.is/Ycjrc