Our city has a big issue around public washrooms, with no end in sight.
Endless amounts of money are being spent and, in some cases, wasted trying to find simple options. My take on this complexity is that we go back to the simplest of solutions. We take all our exterior public civic washrooms and install exterior video cameras with a central call station and electric door strikes on every stall door. This applies to the single-use washrooms only.
What would happen is that if someone wants to use a washroom that is not open during regular hours, they would push the call button, look up to the camera, and ask to use the washroom. But they could also be calling for assistance or some other need not related to the washroom.
A commissionaire, somewhere in a room full of monitors, receives the alert, responds, and directs the person to a given door where they buzz them into the washroom. The person has 30 minutes, after which a loud alarm will go off, making it uncomfortable to remain longer.
This will allow access to washrooms when no security person is directly on-site or outside of normal hours if deemed necessary. It also provides a record of who last used the washroom, and if damage occurs, there will be a record of who caused the damage.
Two other commissionaires would float around between all the sites throughout the day, as they currently do. They can check on the washroom’s cleanliness and deal with issues as they arise. We currently have push-to-call functionality on apartments and some commercial buildings. Many gas stations require people to ask for a key to be able to access the washroom.
It is not a stretch to ask that people interact in this manner. This identifies who is making the request and informs them by doing so that there is a record that they made that request. There is nothing wrong with making people accountable for their own actions. I do not believe that people should be allowed to continue to make willful damage to civic property without accountability. There are reasonable public norms that can be adhered to even in this situation.