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San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

sfchronicle.com

711–720 of 832 posts

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

#711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6 million million?

6 million. Slipped my mind that MM is industry specific. M is ambiguous between the Roman (M = 1,000), the SI prefix (M = 1,000,000), and metres (screen readers). $1MM (capitalized) or $1mn (more recent) reduces the ambiguity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MM#Units_of_measurement

If M is roman, wouldnt MM equal 2000? As in this year, MMXXII.

Thanks for the explanation though. Next we'll get into how a european billion is 1000 times more than a US billion.

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

#712
post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maybe the Republicans _are_ on to something: the government has become too big. Except this is SF, not the Federal Government, and part of the reason the costs are so high is because PG&E is holding the city hostage. Republicans want giant corporations like PG&E to have more power to hold the government hostage and loot it. Why do you pay attention to what they say, rather than what they do? They never actually shr…

You know people are actually Republicans, right? You think what they want is for big companies to loot the government? That sounds like you view Republicans as the villains on Captain Planet. The Republican position is probably more like "With less regulation more companies could flourish and compete in the same space and then market forces would drive costs down" and less about wanting to steal from people. It's cra…

Republicans lately do not operate in good faith. At least the federally elected ones.

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

#713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assumed by "Republicans" they meant Republican politicans and the wealthy entities that support them, rather than party members (the general populace).

You say that as though SF hasn't been run exclusively by democrats for 30+ years. Democrat politicians care as little for their constituents as republican.

At least democrats do not want to take away women's and gay rights.

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

#714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not have a full time janitor who cleans after each visit? much cheaper than a self cleaning toilet. even if you pay $100k to the janitor in annual salary, it will take 10+yrs to reach 1.7M and who knows what kind of issues these self cleaning toilets will have in that 10yrs.

Because a human who can afford to live in San Francisco almost certainly costs more than this machine over 10 years (the 1.7 million is for the whole project, not just the self cleaning portion), and drugged out crazies can make a mess that would be a very hard and unpleasant job to give a human.

They're already hiring an attendant to ensure it doesn't run when someone is in it.

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

#715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assumed by "Republicans" they meant Republican politicans and the wealthy entities that support them, rather than party members (the general populace).

You say that as though SF hasn't been run exclusively by democrats for 30+ years. Democrat politicians care as little for their constituents as republican.

Y’all are funny in there (US). Every time someone argues that “democratic politicians this” or “republican politicians that” the rest of the world looks at each other like “do they think that they actually have two different parties?”

Even based on public policy (and ignoring how their private actions), US democrats are closer to “global centre” but still in many cases to the right of centre.

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

#716

It's simple. It's not their money. When you ask any SF Department to give you a budget for something, they will just hallucinate a number and pull it out of their ass. Matt Haney (the State Senator) asked the Parks & Rec Department for an estimate of what would it cost to build the toilet (given that the hookups are already in place). They shrugged and pulled a figure of $1.7M out of their ass. And he just accepted t…

You can toss up a stick built or modular house for like 100k these days, and they can build these prefabs near instantly, at a better quality than a lot of stuff built during the 80's/90's.

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

#717

Price doesn’t seem that outrageous to me. Public bathrooms in cities get destroyed and are very difficult to maintain; a lot of cities give up on free restrooms entirely. One of the biggest perks of working downtown in a moderately sized or larger city is being able to go to the bathroom there outside of work hours. I priced out some relatively minor kitchen/bathroom renovation work in 2018 at around $100k. Put it of…

>I priced out some relatively minor kitchen/bathroom renovation work in 2018 ... today the quote for the same work is well over $300k.

Lmao what. 300k for minor renovations? Is it a minor renovation on the international space station or something?

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

#718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that as though SF hasn't been run exclusively by democrats for 30+ years. Democrat politicians care as little for their constituents as republican.

Y’all are funny in there (US). Every time someone argues that “democratic politicians this” or “republican politicians that” the rest of the world looks at each other like “do they think that they actually have two different parties?” Even based on public policy (and ignoring how their private actions), US democrats are closer to “global centre” but still in many cases to the right of centre.

You don’t speak for the rest of the world. And no, democrats are not to the right of center.

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

#719
post #160

Why is it that the deepest blue areas of the country have some of the most abject inequity and poverty? It seems that there's a fine line between compassion and enablement when it comes to the deep blue municipalities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, etc. Sure the rustbelt, deep south, and Appalachia are areas with similar problems and mixed politics, but they also somehow feel different.

The destitute are merely more visible in "big dense blue cities" but statistically there are more of them in rural red places like Mississippi and Oklahoma. After all, in OK or MS you need a car, which is a $2000+ asset, just to even access any public space or resource or make yourself visible at all. There's much more poverty in those places, but it is hidden away. You can see a slight bit of it at gas stations that…

> After all, in OK or MS you need a car, which is a $2000+ asset, just to even access any public space or resource or make yourself visible at all.

Nah, you may need a ride every once in a great while, but in most counties you can get by just walking or biking so long as you live in the county seat. Most services are still consolidated within a couple square miles.

The bigger difference is that you can be incredibly poor and still have a house. We didn't have utilities a decent portion of the time growing up because we were so poor, house was in condemn-worthy condition for most of the time we lived there (roof, basement), but my mom's mortgage was, and still is, around $200 a month.

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

#720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These were the type of public toilets in France, it was actually very interesting to see and a bit confusing as I couldn't figure out why I couldn't go in right after another person... Wonder if it cost Paris 1.7 mil as well?

Don’t the ones in Paris cost money?

they should be free. You can find paying toilets in some train stations, but in those, there are people taking care of them
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