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Heads up, New York!

by Sandy Ikeda
Mon, 14 Jan 2008 at 3:00 AM

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City Hall is once again taking on the challenge of the public toilet. A New York Times article the other day describes in detail both the look and operation of the new device. The accompanying picture, which shows three city officials standing solemnly around the commode, hands clasped in front of them at, uh, waist level, makes a rather interesting first impression. One of them is deputy mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff, head (pun intended) of city planning, who was featured in one of my previous blog posts. Which only goes to show that, from the WTC to the WC, there doesn't seem to be anything the out-going deputy mayor doesn't have a hand in.

The single-occupant apparatus reportedly costs $100K to build and 25 cents to use. There's nothing in the article about maintenance costs, but I would expect them to be at least as high as your typical Porta-Potty (with mechanical repair and supplies substituting for labor), although this stylish contraption probably wins the durability contest. The plans call for installing 20 of these for starters. You can see one for yourself, if you're so inclined (as I am), at Madison Avenue and 23rd Street.

The engineers seem to have effectively addressed the sanitation problem: After each use the inside is sprayed down with antiseptic and then blown dry.

There are some downsides to this, however. It's troubling to me that each user is limited to just three 16-inch strips of toilet paper. So while a clean public toilet may come in handy sometime, to be on the safe side BYOTP.

Also, it reportedly takes 90 seconds to clean between users, during which time the door is shut, and then another 20 to 30 seconds for the door to close once you've entered it, to accommodate those in wheelchairs. (For $100K, why couldn't they have just included a button to shut the door?) This means that there is a two-minute wait between users. Standing behind even one person could thus be pretty arduous, never mind two or three. Those in desperate straights will just have to, as those annoying subway announcements school-marmishly implore, "Please be patient!"

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