Posted on 07/17/2008 10:45:23 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd
SEATTLE — After spending $5 million on its five automated public toilets, Seattle is calling it quits.
One of San Francisco’s toilets, which, officials say, always need maintenance adjustments. In the end, the restrooms, installed in early 2004, had become so filthy, so overrun with drug abusers and prostitutes, that although use was free of charge, even some of the city’s most destitute people refused to step inside them.
The units were put up for sale Wednesday afternoon on eBay, with a starting bid set by the city at $89,000 apiece.
The dismal outcome coincides with plans by New York, Los Angeles and Boston, among other cities, to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for expansion this fall in their installation of automated toilets — stand-alone structures with metal doors that open at the press of a button and stay closed for up to 20 minutes. The units clean themselves after each use, disinfecting the seats and power-washing the floors.
Seattle officials say the project here failed because the toilets, which are to close on Aug. 1, were placed in neighborhoods that already had many drug users and transients. Then there was the matter of cost: $1 million apiece over five years, which because of a local ordinance had to be borne entirely by taxpayers instead of advertisers.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
No bids for the junkie toilets. What a shock!!!!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170240609824
What a poorly written article. Look at the first “sentence” in the second paragraph. Whaaaa????
Ooops. Posted already. Please delete.
No. The phone booth went the way of the Box and Chain.
After reading the article, I'd say that Seattle's Automated Toilets went the way of nice, middle class neighborhoods, with their various amenities like public bathrooms, safe parks, and swimming pools.
Say no reserve on bid - someone will take them. A big construction project or ski/beach resort. Once you get them off the street, they will be cleaner and not used by drug users or prostitutes.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! (wipes eyes) Thanks. I needed that.
Another multi million dollar liberal policy failure that could have been averted with a few pennies of common sense.
Why not have the floor drop open so that any trash falls into a compactor underneath before the floor scrubbers kick in? That would allow the toilet cleaning systems to work as designed.
Yes, but he made up for it by using 6 commas in the second sentence!
What, do you mean?
8^)
I can just hear it coming from Comrade Nickels and the rest of the dems in Seattle, “It appears we wasted more millions in tax payer money on another failed social program that anyone could see was a boondoggle from the begining, but our intentions were good....Remember to vote for us in Nov!”
yeah, it makes no sense, it starts out as if it were leading somewhere and then just dies. Typical modern journalist writing. No wonder people get confused.
Yeah, and get rid of any crack smokers who haven't left the toilet yet! Make it a really strong compactor and maybe the city would run out of drug users after a short time!
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