Why are public toilets still so rare?

Cities in the United States and elsewhere have made progress, but challenges remain.

When a visiting friend asked me if I wanted to go running in Philadelphia, I did a lot of planning. Not just our itinerary, but where to go to the bathroom. It didn't go well.

I took the PATCO Speedline, which doesn't have toilets on the trains. The station I left from in southern New Jersey didn't have one either, nor did the one I arrived at in Philadelphia. When I arrived at my friend's hotel, the toilets in the lobby were locked.

Luckily I was able to follow a woman with an access code in The bathroom. But it was a matter of luck. Relying on the whims of fate was my only option because the United States - and much of the world - has a problem with public restrooms.

On average, states The United States has just eight public toilets for every 100,000 people, according to the Public Toilet Index, a 2021 report by British firm QS Bathrooms Supplies. This is far behind Iceland, the country with the highest density of public toilets: 56 per 100,000 inhabitants. That number drops to four per 100,000 in New York. Madison, Wis., led the way for US cities, with 35 per 100,000.

It wasn't always this way. In the 18th century, before indoor plumbing, bathrooms were communal and generally communal, said Debbie Miller, curator of the Independence National Historical Park museum. In Philadelphia, one of these octagonal outhouses was located in a public garden behind what is now known as Independence Hall. "You could have shared the restroom with George Washington," she said.

Acceptance of public and shared bathrooms changed at the time Victorian, Ms. Miller said, when body functions became more taboo. The temperance movement to limit alcohol consumption led cities to build public restrooms in the late 1800s and early 1900s: it was thought that men would not need to enter a bar to use the toilet. In the 1930s, investments through the Works Progress Administration and the Civil Works Administration added more than two million latrines in parks, on public lands, and in rural areas, as well as "sanitary blocks in cities, including Central Park.

ImageA toilet block in Central Park in Manhattan in 1965. Credit...Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times

But as city budgets dried up in the 1970s, resources for maintenance have also decreased. Movements arose to end the practice of pay toilets, seen as both sexist (urinals were often free but cubicles were not) and classist. Cities have responded by removing public restrooms altogether.

Bathrooms are "difficult spaces because they often end up being the places where people get needs they need. they can't respond anywhere else,” such as sex work, drug use, or sleeping, said Lezlie Lowe, the author of “No Place to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs.” "All of these social concerns have nothing to do with bathrooms, but due to the nature of these spaces, bathrooms end up being used by people to meet their needs, whether of addiction or despair."

With the closure of public restrooms, establishments such as cafes, museums, libraries and department stores - which are not generally open only at certain times - had to become gatekeepers to the x restrooms.

"We face a problem where the demand for public restrooms far exceeds the supply," said Steven Soifer, president of the American Re ...