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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

#221

Post by stuaxo »

MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #7
teddyh wrote: post #3

> User IDs are part of Throne’s accountability system: After you use a restroom, you’re asked to rate its cleanliness. Meanwhile, each user gets a “Throne score,” similar to Uber, and repeat offenders who abuse the restroom will be blocked. Weight sensors also track if someone’s been in the bathroom too long. “Very few people create issues in [public] bathrooms, don’t respect that amenity, and then ruin it for the ma…

Seriously though, accountability is the missing thing. If getting banned for consistently making a mess is what it takes to get public bathrooms back, then so be it. There's no excuse for the shit I've seen. I'm tired of being denied amenities because of other peoples' degenerate behaviour.

In some places they have attendents for loos, that could work there.

You need more budget put into these things.

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

#222

Post by hot_gril »

morsch wrote: post #133
hot_gril wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only a problem if you’re a street critter In parts of the Bay Area, sometimes you can't find a restroom no matter who you are. The UC Berkeley campus during school breaks is one such place. The campus has 0, and the businesses in the surrounding city have very few restrooms, even for paying customers. The subway has restrooms, but they're nearly always closed. You pretty much have to go to a sit-down restaurant (go…

Sit down restaurants close at 9pm?

Most of them yes. Some at 10pm. In Silicon Valley, even 8:30pm is sorta common, but that's for a different reason.

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

#224

Post by survirtual »

slumpt_ wrote: post #77
baron816 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good summary for what it’s like to live in SF. There are lots of people around who are completely immune from any accountability and thus treat the whole city as a literal public toilet (and land fill).

Such is the consequence of a housing crisis and the downstream homelessness, despair, and of course mental illness. Don't give someone a roof and a toilet and they may just find any old place to go!

The crisis is one of poverty. While a large portion if the population (and almost everyone on HN) lives in massive, safe homes with upscale communities, good food, good human connection, support networks, they deny nearly everyone else access to the same.

Where can someone on a bartenders wage buy a house and work where they work? Where can they even buy land?

Yet there are vast swaths of land unused. Countless gigantic homes take up enormous spaces. And all the policy protects the people with those homes and property instead of the majority of people.

We don’t have a homeless crisis. We have a resource allocation crisis.

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

#225

Post by antifa »

tomjen3 wrote: post #167
MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously though, accountability is the missing thing. If getting banned for consistently making a mess is what it takes to get public bathrooms back, then so be it. There's no excuse for the shit I've seen. I'm tired of being denied amenities because of other peoples' degenerate behaviour.

I completely agree with you, and it is important to remember that all it takes is very few people to ruin it for everybody. With accountability comes consequences and that fixes the incentive function. However I also think the system requires something kinda like forgiveness, or maybe better yet, redemption. If, once you have been kicked out there is nothing you can do to be let back in then nothing incentivises you…

What happens when you've been falsely accused? What happens when the person before you's 2/10 dirty is the person after you's 8/10 dirty? There's also a privacy problem with there being a poop log attached to our IDs.

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

#226

Post by SilasX »

Dalewyn wrote: post #184
ryandrake wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason for this is because individuals who do not clean up after themselves in public spaces are shamed and ridiculed by Japanese society at large with no holds barred. Not being from Japan, I’m curious: how does this work in practice? If I were to go into a bathroom in Japan and smear my own shit all over the walls and leave, 1. how does anyone know I did it, 2. if somehow someone actually knew I did it, how e…

That's the thing: It is deeply ingrained in the very foundations of Japanese culture and society to always conduct yourself in a manner that will at the very least not hinder others unnecessarily. Japanese are raised from the very beginning to be ashamed of making a mess and not cleaning up, to be ashamed of being irresponsible. Everyone is taught that "the Sun is watching you", that someone (or something!) somewhere…

>A Japanese person won't even dare, because they are taught to clean up regardless of a janitor.

Great, but this contradicts your other post that seemed to be claiming that bathroom shaming specifically was the solution the bathroom problem, which the parent was rightly incredulous of as how it actually works in Japan.

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

#227

Post by tedmiston »

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'…

> San Francisco has an attended 24 hour portable restroom operation in poor parts of the city, called "Pit Stop". Total operating costs are around $30 per flush.[2]

This is some questionable math. They took the costs of the units and staff and divided by the number of late night usages to arrive at ~$30 per usage.

But if they were used twice as much that rate would be halved, etc.

In any case the fixed costs are the same regardless of usage metrics.

It's very misleading to take a highly fixed cost and label it like a usage-based cost.

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

#228

Post by tedmiston »

Johnythree wrote: post #119
imgabe wrote: post #37

I don't know why cities don't offer a tax break to businesses to make their bathrooms publicly available. Make it enough that they can hire an extra employee to make sure there's someone to check the bathroom periodically and do some random checks to make sure businesses aren't cheating. It would have to be cheaper than operating separate public bathrooms. I live in Hong Kong and am still a little amazed at the ubiqu…

Better still, make providing a public bathroom a condition of opening a business.

Why would (should) a private business owner be required to provide a public service to their non-customers?

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

#229

Post by tedmiston »

ryukafalz wrote: post #17

> Weight sensors also track if someone’s been in the bathroom too long. As someone with IBS and a few other related things this sounds like it has the potential to be incredibly annoying and frustrating.

That'll cost you double! Don't forget to tip on your way out!

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

#230

Post by ahtihn »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #141
BitwiseFool wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"but to improve society so that gatekeeping becomes unnecessary." I understand the sentiment but I ultimately find such a stance unhelpful and counterproductive because it is essentially saying the problems we face would go away if we only just created a utopia. Like, what's stopping us? Trying to create better public restrooms with a new system seems far more achievable than implementing a new socioeconomic system…

It doesn't need to be a utopia. Apartheid regimes or extreme poverty lead to gated compounds for the rich with depressing predictability. Toilets that exclude the poor are great for ensuring the rich have access to nice private toilets. Doesn't help those who can't afford the subscription fee.

> Toilets that exclude the poor are great for ensuring the rich have access to nice private toilets

I don't think leaving toilets in a usable state after using them has anything to do with being rich or poor. It's not something that requires money.

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