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D.C.-area startup wants to solve the public bathroom problem

washingtonian.com

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Re: D.C.-area startup wants to solve the public bathroom problem

#211

Post by robk »

ryandrake wrote: post #188
jbuhbjlnjbn wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every company I have worked for has a certain number of people that are not capable, or willing, to leave the sanitary facilities in an acceptable state. From people actively soiling the facilities, to people not giving a fuck about leaving a mess (making a 'seat cover' out of tp, then leaving it on the floor; not cleaning after themselfes), to people with a 'not my job' egocentrical attitude. Those are studied engin…

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Re: D.C.-area startup wants to solve the public bathroom problem

#212

Post by NeutralCrane »

jotm wrote: post #157
creato wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think people are pooping on the sidewalk because they don’t know any better? Their first grade teacher failed them?

We were taught civics and society alongside math. Children/pupils/young adults also did cleaning, tree planting, everyday group work. I'm surprised some countries don't have that, it helps make a better society.

Schools in America do the same. The issue is that outside of school, the lessons being taught by society are the exact opposite. It’s all about individualism and maximizing utility for one’s self while minimizing what one puts into society.

Relying on our schools will educate us out of the problem won’t work. We have too many narcissists and sociopaths in our society, and we spend too much time catering to and rewarding them.

Re: D.C.-area startup wants to solve the public bathroom problem

#213

Post by robk »

markdestouches wrote: post #179

You buy a card with a unique id that grants access to any public bathroom cabin. Anyone with such card can report a cabin if it's a mess. If it is - the previous visitor's card gets banned. You also get banned for false reports. The maintainers of the bathroom verify the reports. The card needs to be expensive enough to not be disposable, but also cheap enough so that all social classes can afford it. Problem solved…

until charities decide to start buying them on behalf of drug users and giving them new ones after their ban. No one will be able to stand up to the complaints that a person can be banned from the toilet no matter how badly they destroy it

Re: D.C.-area startup wants to solve the public bathroom problem

#215

Post by bart_spoon »

thinkingemote wrote: post #135

At root is that an individualist culture exposes itself as seriously broken in the public space. There can be no public good if the individual always comes first. Paid high tech street toilets are a logical conclusion of a culture with little shared public good. The human rights and priority of the individual is respected and maintained. Public toilets will go away as the public goes away.

I’ve lived in some places that emphasize the collective over the individual, and I’ve come to the same conclusion. I have little hope that America improves at all in any of these dimensions. Individualism is too engrained.

Re: D.C.-area startup wants to solve the public bathroom problem

#216

Post by erenyeager »

Animats wrote: post #18

In San Francisco JCDeaux already does that. Those units are self-cleaning, handicapped-accessible, and cost about $300K each. They're complicated, with motors, sensors, and valves. All the hardware and controls are Telemechanique industrial grade. SF has a big problem with those. Vandalism, people shooting up inside, people dumping trash in them, etc. There's no problem providing public bathrooms for rich people. It'…

What a frightening solution that Portland loo is. Compromising on the most basic sense of privacy that a bathroom should provide. And putting the hand washing station on the outside? This just reeks of cultural bias and not considering the bathroom uses of others.

Some people like to carry bidets they can fill to clean themselves, some people like to wet toilet papers they use for cleaning, some people feel safety and more secure being able to clean themselves and make ablution in an enclosed bathroom environment.

Certainly hope the project fails.

Re: D.C.-area startup wants to solve the public bathroom problem

#217

Post by markdestouches »

incone123 wrote: post #185
markdestouches wrote: post #179

You buy a card with a unique id that grants access to any public bathroom cabin. Anyone with such card can report a cabin if it's a mess. If it is - the previous visitor's card gets banned. You also get banned for false reports. The maintainers of the bathroom verify the reports. The card needs to be expensive enough to not be disposable, but also cheap enough so that all social classes can afford it. Problem solved…

Flaw in that: I can leave the place covered in shit, my card gets reported by the next user and I just buy another anonymous card because I can afford it.

Yes, you can do that. But the price should be such (say, $30) that people like you would be a very small minority. Of course, there will still be people that could do that. The system does not eliminate such behavior completely, but it reduces it to the point where it does not affect the availability of the service (in theory, ofc). Moreover, under such system the ones who pay the most are the exact same people who cause the most mess.

Re: D.C.-area startup wants to solve the public bathroom problem

#218

Post by sokoloff »

rightbyte wrote: post #164
teddyh wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only acceptable short-term solution I can think of at the moment is simply to increase the cleaning until the bathrooms are always acceptable. There are some things which could be done to turn this from prohibitively expensive to simply very expensive one: One idea mentioned in the article is to turn a tradidional timer-based activity to a level-based trigger; i.e. if you have two bathrooms at the same location,…

Ye. People are overstating the problem with having public bathrooms. It is just that it need cleaning like hourly and be closed during night so people don't sleep there. Even if you don't have users who pee all over the ring and floor the bathroom will look like a mess after 100 visits.

We have 4 people who live in our house. I don’t track bathroom visits, but I’m pretty sure we each average 5 per day or 140 per week, with one bathroom getting 75-85% of the usage.

We clean the bathrooms every two weeks and it’s far from “a mess” when it comes time to clean it, so much so that we need to have a calendar reminder to do it.

I think there’s something about “the public” that’s underlying that difference.

Re: D.C.-area startup wants to solve the public bathroom problem

#219

Post by wildrhythms »

Gareth321 wrote: post #190
atoav wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what living in a society where winning more than the next person is the only thing that counts will give you. Why should anybody fulfill their part of the unspoken contract with the rest of society, if solidarity only goes one way? If people shall care about collective goods, there needs to be an actual collective spirit first. Places where this type of public infrastructure actually works are also places whe…

This is why I do not support multiculturalism. This is contentious today for a number of reasons. Moreso because the research is so divided. There are plenty of studies which find in both directions. However, having lived in highly multicultural societies and more culturally homogenous societies, I firmly believe that it damages the social contract. When neighbours hold different and often incompatible values, not on…

Why have you chosen to inject 'multiculturalism' into a topic about conceptually 'winning' in society? Do you think maybe there is a common economic system underlying everything that enables the concept 'winning'?

Re: D.C.-area startup wants to solve the public bathroom problem

#220

Post by eurasiantiger »

Johnythree wrote: post #115
eurasiantiger wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So… fascism?

No, Socialism. Let the local people decide. If the offenders thought that the locals might punish them, they would behave better.

No. They would just go elsewhere to commit offenses.

Retributive justice is not really effective when the offender’s world view internally justifies their actions.

It’s a common theme that criminals are victims of circumstance to such a degree that the enforcing entity is seen as another arm of the system that caused their criminal behavior in the first place.

Imagine being in a car crash, having difficult pains, getting prescribed oxy- or hydrocodone, and after the script runs out, asking for a refill gets you a stamped as a drug seeker, never to receive another prescription ever again.

But the pain and the withdrawals are still there. This has created an incredible numbed of convicted criminals and homeless people. A Venn diagram of these two populations overlaps with people who spend nights in public toilets.

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