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San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

sfchronicle.com

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Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#531

Post by notch656a »

jquery wrote: post #396

Any actual SF residents in this thread? I’m seeing a lot of very authoritative posts coming from places of ignorance. One person even called it a “right wing dystopia”. Here’s the bottom line. The problems we are trying to solve in SF are hard . This place is fully developed. No way around that. Is SF perfect? No, not at all. But damn if this city doesn’t try its hardest, moreso than almost any other city I know of.…

>But damn if this city doesn’t try its hardest, moreso than almost any other city I know of.

This is the problem.

The problem is you're trying too damn hard. Just build the fucking toilet. Less trying hard to do things the perfect way and be better than "almost any other city." At this point you should be looking at Camden or Gary IN for inspiration.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#532

Post by hot_gril »

vanillax wrote: post #47

I would never step foot into a public SF toliet. Last time I went in there the homeless shit all over the floor and toliet and walls. I went in and nearly threw up. A homeless person pointed and laughed at me. Fuck that.

I wouldn't either, but that's only cause I've literally never found one.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#533

Post by tchaffee »

ActorNightly wrote: post #463
screye wrote: post #148

Is the SF Bay Area the worst managed "successful" economic urban area in the world ? It performs pretty badly on public transport, safety, affordability & sanitation. All its pros seem to exist despite the management, and not because of it. (Universities, Jobs, Weather, Nature) I thought Greater Seattle was badly managed, but it has been funding light rail, missing middle-housing and recently started reversing the cr…

Quoted post unavailable.

And here you are virtue signaling that you're so much better. Even worse: with a false claim.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#534

Post by hot_gril »

gregoriol wrote: post #254
lr4444lr wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to pay an attendant hourly just to be sure no one is in there while the self clean runs? Why can't it operate based on a weight sensor?

Because no startup has made an AI for that purpose yet?

No post body was provided.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#535

Post by whimsicalism »

bombcar wrote: post #528
whimsicalism wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's only available to people who have none. It's only available to people who have none across the entire country , plus it lowers the cost at the margin to becoming homeless (albeit only slightly). > Housing demand is finite. So is traffic demand. Demand being finite does not mean that induced demand no longer exists as phenomenon.

Induced demand is just another way of saying the supply is too low - and increasing the supply doesn't "increase the demand" it just reveals demand that was already there (and being unfulfilled).

> demand that was already there (and being unfulfilled).

This is true of anything with supply and demand and a >0$ price.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#536

Post by yupper32 »

uoaei wrote: post #389
gregoriol wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because no startup has made an AI for that purpose yet?

All you need is a PIR sensor

It's cheaper to pay someone $20 an hour 24 hours a day for 20 years than it is to pay out the $4mil lawsuit for when that sensor fails.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#537

Post by testfoobar »

rootusrootus wrote: post #427
screye wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sound like something I’d see back home in India I have started appreciating bribery and corruption as a necessary lubrication for any excessively bureaucratic system to work. Trying to go through all of the legal rigamarole of the Indian regulatory process would mean nothing ever gets done.

> I have started appreciating bribery and corruption as a necessary lubrication for any excessively bureaucratic system to work. I feel similarly, when it comes to pork. We tried to eliminate that from congress, calling it wasteful and corrupting. And perhaps at some level that is accurate. But when we took it away, now all we have is naked ideology. It's not clear to me that this is an improvement, in fact I think i…

Transparency and politics can't mix. Zero sum deals where some group wins while another group loses are nearly impossible. Yet those are exactly the deals that need to be done. Example: America cannot agree where to store its nuclear waste.

https://ag.nv.gov/Hot_Topics/Issue/Yucca/

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#538

Post by hot_gril »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #510
Phlogistique wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the toilets in Paris self-clean between users. You don't need the sensor to work not to get sprayed, just to exit the toilet when a voice says "EXIT THE TOILET NOW, THE SELF CLEANING PROCESS IS ABOUT TO BEGIN.

I used one of these and the self clean cycle started without warning while I was washing my hands. I couldn’t have been in there more than 4-5 minutes. Luckily the door didn’t lock so I was able to escape before getting “cleaned”.

Heck, I cover up the self-flushing mechanism on toilets every time then remove it after. Not a pleasant surprise when it miscalculates.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#539

Post by snarkyturtle »

mattnewton wrote: post #196
rajup wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably don’t want to step in SF ever. FTFY.

I feel like there are two SF's - the one that other people write about on 6th Street and the tenderloin, and then the one I visit west of that which is one of the most beautiful and vibrant American cities I have ever spent time in.

So basically any big city. The tourist trap where one wrong turn can lead you to homeless encampments, and the actual city that people live in.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#540

Post by bombcar »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #406
saiya-jin wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No public restrooms, no chairs in Starbucks, covers on everything in Walgreens, ID requirements to enter stuff, you get the idea. There's no obvious solution to that. Is this seriously the reality of SF? Never been there. If yes, that's pretty bad and degrades the city in some aspects to 3rd world place. But then again I am in Europe, many things like crazy homeless people I saw often in LA are unheard of here. Wha…

Yep, sounds about right. If you're a tourist, though, I would say that restrooms are accessible to a similar extent as any European city I've traveled to. They're perhaps more likely to be disgusting if you're in the worst parts of the city. Decent venues stay on top of it, though, and any place with a counter to order from will have a code you need to ask for to gain access. If you're a local, there's of course soci…

And the quiet part that isn't spoken of is that all these businesses HAVE to have restrooms for their employees; and if you are nice and (basically not visibly homeless) and nobody is looking, you can often get access to them "as a favor".

Restrooms are the first victim of the tragedy of the commons.

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