Local public transit

[mtbc]

I find railway travel to be fairly pleasant overall, especially as it means that I need not drive or park. This morning, my seat on the carriage affords me a view of sunrise over the North Sea, there are some lovely coastal routes for quite some distance north and south from here.

One thing that didn't amuse me was that one must pay to use the station toilets. Unfortunately, this seems common at bus stations as well as railway stations. I am all for their covering maintenance via what they charge operators or whatever, money for overheads must come from somewhere, but charging people in transit who may have many small children or continence issues or whatever just seems mean to me, especially where they demand exact change. I find this as disappointing as town councils who like to encourage visitors at times when they have locked up the public toilets. I am not going to be lingering in your retail area if I don't have easy access to toilets.

Another bother is that the wrong train came: the seat reservations are a mess so I may lose a chunk of work time in giving my seat up for somebody more deserving, we shall see. This train is slower than the one planned but I am not on a deadline. It tends to be ScotRail with the issues, I usually have more luck with LNER, but I am not a frequent traveler so the sample size is small.

Comments

[thewayne]

We did a river cruise from Prague to Berlin in '15 and were warned in advance that public toilets were pay in advance and to keep change. I take it that's not the norm in the UK?

At a shopping mall in Berlin, they gave a coupon for X amount off of a purchase, effectively making the visit free.

[mtbc]

It's not the norm in, say, shopping malls, nor airports. But apparently in stations, it is! Also my local park has a pay-to-use toilet.

[thewayne]

Very interesting.  I remember in Prague at an outdoor public toilet and in Berlin at a shopping mall, I don't remember the airport situation in Germany - we flew in and out of Berlin and took a train down to Prague to meet the cruise.  I don't recall using it in the train station, either.  The train was free, that I remember.

[mellowtigger]

Yeah, pay-per-toilet is pretty much the shining example of "capitalism". :( Like most essential services, I think the cost should just be spread out amongst everyone rather than charged at point of use.

[mindstalk]

One thing the US is kind of better on? If we have toilets, they're free. Lots of drinking fountains, too. I encountered pay toilets in the occasional English train station, also Chile and Mexico.

[mellowtigger]

"If we have toilets, they're free."

Well, sort of. There are no pay locks on the doors, anyway. Toilets exist everywhere in the city, but they're usually not accessible. That's something we learned quickly during the Occupy movement. Businesses who said we were free to use their toilets were rare, but even then they had their operating hours. I get why businesses want them to be "for customers only". There are costs to operating them: water, electricity for lights, paper, soap, and staff time for cleaning. It's something I bring up at city/park planning meeting, on the rare occasions that I attend. They offer water fountains but no public toilets. What exactly do they think will happen? (Unspoken answer: "Don't stay here. Just visit briefly, thanks.")