Comment by phil21
5 days ago
It’s really not that cheap at all in major city cores.
Gas stations around me do not generally have a public restroom due to the sheer amount of abuse they are subject to. The very few that do are the “get a key from the attendant after purchase” variety and you’d only use those in a very very dire emergency. You also have to know to ask and likely be known by the attendant since they all have “no public restroom” signs.
It’s a tragedy of the commons sort of situation. Any business that provides it requires 24x7 on-site personnel willing to get into fights with the homeless, drug addicts, and mentally unwell folks. On top of the normal abuse the general public puts on such facilities. The police will be unlikely to respond to such trespassing calls in a timely manner.
An unmanned charging station would be an epic shitshow in a major city if it had public restrooms. You would be talking multiple six figures a year to maintain such a thing. It’s not a “send a cleaning crew once a day” sort of enterprise.
Hell, even with only ride share and delivery driver demographics it would be untenable. My alley is near a major commercial corridor but not crazy busy - with literally hundreds of trash cans lining both sides of it. Every weekend I’m picking up a couple bags worth of trash tossed out of the windows of DoorDash drivers, and every single night I have multiple drivers on my security cameras taking a piss behind my garage. The latter I understand and I “get it” - but the former is inexcusable since it would take literally 15 seconds to get out of your car to toss the McDonald’s bag into a can if you were assed enough to do so. Heck if it’s too cold out you could simply reach out your window and make it happen if you were so inclined.
The first time as a child going to the big city the toilets had blue lights! This was in the late 1980s.
That memory has always stuck with me.
Foreigners often complain that public toilets in the Netherlands cost money to use. Apparently in other places people enjoy cleaning toilets for free?
> You would be talking multiple six figures a year to maintain such a thing.
A trillion dollar company can afford it, as can the profits from a supercharger station. Plus, you can limit it to people who are paying to charge their cars (or their passengers).
I mean why would they.
If they lived in fantasy land with reasonable permitting and running a toilet ment paying for toilet paper, soap, and a janitor to clean it once a day I'm sure they would for the PR win and to sell a few extra Teslas.
In San Francisco as discussed in the article this would be an expensive permitting hassle, endless money sink, target for abuse, bad PR from people complaining about unsafe and unclean toilets, and a legal risk if any incidents happen.
Doing it well (so the toilets are clean and safe) obviously costs money. And obviously Tesla would prefer not to pay money. I don't think that's the issue you think it is. Tons of pollution mitigation efforts cost money that companies don't want to pay and yet work because of laws requiring them.
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Meanwhile, gas stations with toilettes are completely normal and standard.
If you have a business that involves people staying fir long, you have to have wc. They will need to piss and shit, that is given.
Gas stations with toilets are absolutely not normal and standard in these sorts of areas. Including where I live.
Yes, they are normal in most places - but there are areas public restrooms effectively do not exist due to the amount of abuse they take and the zero political or societal interest in fixing those issues or helping local businesses out with appropriate law enforcement or whatnot.
It was pretty rough for me driving through downtown Atlanta - nowhere seemed to have public restrooms.
Around my home every business will have a public restroom, or a not-so-public restroom that's still available if you ask.