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| *Travel Tips>>>Washington, D.C. Travel Tips |
Why doesn't the Washington DC Metro system have public bathrooms? |
Travel Info I noticed that the Metro has no bathrooms, both in the stations and on the trains themselves. Why is that? Travel Tips The other poster may be exaggerating slightly about the $2,500 daily price tag to maintain one bathroom at one station especially when that bathroom is used by Metro staff. With 110 stations and 365 days in the year, Metro would spend $100 Million just to maintain restrooms which is ridiculous. Restrooms exist on MARC and other commuter trains because there are no vagrants riding the rails. The restroom at Union Station smells like a hobo's reunion. Imagine a Metro station or a Metro train smelling like Union Station's men's restroom? No one would ride public transit. Some station managers post "Restroom Broken" signs on the information kiosks to dissuade people from asking to use the restroom. Think about it - the station manager and other Metro employees have access to the restroom but if one member of the public is seen using the restroom - there will be thousands banging on the door. For example, at the Shady Grove Station - I usually have to walk 5 minutes to use the restroom either at the Carmax or the car dealer across the street. During a recent service outage, I had to exit the Metro system completely to use the restroom at a business. Over 750,000 people a day use Metro on a daily basis during the weekdays. Metro has a $120 Million deficit and pays tons of overtime. Metro is going to remove the carpets and reconfigure the trains to carry more people for less maintenance costs. Short of carrying a bottle and/or wearing Depends without being noticed by others and/or the police, one has to plan bathroom breaks very carefully when using Metro. Others There are a number of answers that have been suggested, but I think the real big reson is security. It's hard to monitor what goes on in bathrooms. There are some bathrooms in metro stations - in an emergency you can use them, although that is not always true. They are primarily for Metro staff. Another, minor reason is the cost of keeping bathrooms clean, and maintaining them. A few years ago they did a test of freestanding bathrooms that were self cleaning, similar to some in Europe, but they were not ultimately considered feasible. Like most things, it ultimately comes down to a question of money. Keeping a public bathroom safe, functional, and sanitary is actually shockingly expensive. Basically, in order to keep vandals from defacing or destroying the facility, to prevent muggings, sexual activity, and drug use from taking place, and to prevent homeless people from using the facility as a motel, a full-time security guard or police officer would have to be posted inside each restroom. Additionally, a cleaning person would need to be available to clean up the stalls; for example, when someone defecates on the toilet seat or in the urinal. A repair person would have to be available for the instances when someone clogged a toilet. Although this person wouldn't need to be exclusive to a given station, I would still imagine that you're looking at 2-4 hours per day, not including the cost of replacement parts. Finally, cleaning supplies and toiletries, such as toilet paper, paper towels and hand soap, would need to be paid for. Also, insurance, to cover when someone inevitably slips and falls in the restroom and sues for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'd estimate the cost of keeping a set of men's and women's bathrooms running at a Metro Station would be around $80-$120 per hour, if not more, which would be around $1500-$2500 per day. This would add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the yearly operating cost of each Metro station, or millions of dollars over the entire system, which is money they simply don't have. It's cheaper just to eliminate the public restrooms. It is not an advertised fact that Metro does have public restrooms. You have to ask the station attendant. The restrooms are in the back areas and you have to be escorted. Why not in plain view? Too many bums and vagrants in the city. The restrooms would look and smell terrible and be very dangerous. Why not on trains? No subway system has restrooms on the trains. Los Angeles' Metro system has no restrooms either. The reason they give is they don't want the homeless to use the stations as shelters. There are no bathrooms actually on the trains of any subway system I've been on (and I've been on probably 20 different subway systems). There's no space for bathrooms on the trains and it would be too difficult and costly to install them. Many of the major subway stations - and even a lot of the smaller ones - actually do have bathrooms, that are technically for Metro employee use only but can be used by the public in emergency situations at the station manager's discretion. It would be costly to maintain public bathrooms (as well as install them) and also there's the safety issue - they can't be monitored as easily. To avoid giving bums an excuse to hang around. The metro is not a destination, it's a transportation system. |
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