MyWHaT

Toilets for walkability

Not mentioned in Monday’s post proclaiming myself a public toilet enthusiast (aren’t you?) is the relationship between a community’s walkability and provisioning for the expected, and unexpected, bodily needs of the residents and visitors. We’ve all been there, away from home, on foot, and looking around with a grimace. We get through it, perhaps a little uncomfortably, but we make it.

However, the next time we head-out the door we might reconsider our mode of travel or the length of time we plan to be out. This concerns escalate with children in tow or if we have a medical, or age related, condition that demand regular attention.

What is the relationship between walkability and a community’s allotment of public toilets? I suspect, that in most of the world’s “walkable cities” you’ll find public toilets at the ready and the way-finding in place to leave little confusion of where they are located. In other places, something keeping them from becoming truly great may just be having public toilets at the ready.

In the lead up to the Beijing Olympics, access to clean public toilets was a major bragging point for the city authorities.  The goal, which by most measures was met, was to have a public toilet located within a 5-minute walk of any downtown location (C.Review). Having seen the before and after, I can attest, Beijing is a far better place for the effort.

Here in the U.S., as previously discussed, the norm is avoidance of the topic. We apparently prefer to subsidize the storage of people’s automobiles (MW) over providing for bodily requirements that impact everyone’s ability to be a fully functioning human. Traverse City has spent $7-$10 million a piece building two parking decks in the last decade and lacked the foresight to spend the extra clams to include public bathrooms in the structures.  An aside: what is the connection to constipation levels and a lack of clean, inviting public toilets? How does that impact driving behavior? (Yes, these are the things I think about.)

Click for full transparency.

Toilets per person

Back in 2007, the info-graphic team at Good Magazine showed the dearth of public amenities in major Cities in the U.S. Ignoring New York, renowned for a lack of stalls and where Starbuck employees recently started pushing back (NYTimes), the graphic shows our major cities failing in the toilet department. San Francisco provides 1 toilet for every 30,000 people; Boston, 571,429 restrooms per person. Beijing shows a public toilet for every 3,191.

From what I hear, Boston is a great place to walk around. New York, the same. At the same time, walking around Manhattan for a full day you quickly realize the lack of facilities. It can lead to some critical moments in search of a friendly business–hopefully, one that doesn’t require a purchase as there are only so many coffee drinks one can consume in day. Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, introduced here on Monday, devotes much space deconstructing the human & environmental impact the lack of public toilets has in New York City.

Nature will call

I imagine a lot of Michigan towns and cities are like Traverse City. Amenities are available if you look, but they are typically dated, undesirable, not open, or simply not located near activity centers. Midwestern hospitality has led to a few establishments that openly allow use of restrooms without a purchase. However, that is less than perfect. Finding these “public friendly” toilets is difficult unless you’re in the know and then they tend to be in the back of stores which decreases the comfort level if you aren’t there to shop and the location is certainly not intuitive. Relying on private businesses to provide amenities is an added tax on them and doesn’t provide equitable opportunity for the diverse make-up of visitors to a community.

I’ll admit it again, I am a public toilet enthusiast. To encourage people to be active and enjoy our public spaces, it behooves all parties concerned to treat people with dignity and respect. Those who advocate for more sidewalks, bike lanes, better transit, more tourism dollars, better public health, a cleaner environment, and for people to stop peeing in the alleys all benefit from advocating for and supporting efforts for more and improved public toilets. Politically, it is difficult to fund public toilets. There aren’t many grants available to fund public restrooms, so local governments need to find the money locally to make them a priority.

As residents of the City, many of whom understand the desire for a more walkable community, it’s important we not look past fundamental needs for privacy, dignity and comfort for those brief moments in our days when nature calls.

Are you a public toilet enthusiast?

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Resources:

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  In Portland, PLUSH formed to advocate for public restrooms: “PHLUSH believes that toilet availability is a human right and that well-designed sanitation facilities restore health to our cities, our waters and our soils.”

• Nationally, the American Restroom Association  formed to advocate ”for the availability of clean, safe, well designed public restrooms.“

• And, throughly impressive, is the Australian National Public Toilet Map project run by the National Continence Management Strategy and is funded by the federal government–radical Aussies.

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Delivering “mind-screws” via Rosscott, Inc

Thought of this recently when I was buzzed by Ford-150 while crossing in a crosswalk on Woodmere Ave. I yelled obscenities. He flipped me off.

Simply stating: “your spewing grape jelly!” might have been more effective. Moving on.

Challenge:

What is the craziest mind-screw you’ve delivered on the streets? 

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* Odd art from the inter-webs, like this, is regularly shared on the MyWHaT Tumblr.

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Put bluntly, peeing is political, and so is taking a shit and washing up”

~Harvey Molotch, Introduction to Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing

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Visiting the toilet is a core issue for the human animal, yet, typically, we hold our elimination needs close. It is a private experience, to be taking care of quietly and inconspicuously. Yet, everyone has at one time or another, some on a more regular basis, felt the urge to eliminate something within us at a time completely unscheduled, in a situation completely unprepared, and in a location completely void of a public toilet.

When that animal surfaces, there is little time for negotiation. Anyone who has spent an afternoon downtown with a 5-year old knows the look on that face. You might also know the pain and frustration first-hand if you or your someone you know is one of the 25-million Americans with incontinence.

Publicly we are mostly uncomfortable with toilet talk. You can see the inner agony on the faces of community leaders when a public toilet issue makes it way onto the agenda. Otherwise grown men become wise-cracking teenagers. Women, often the mothers and de-facto directors of family toilet matters, are either not represented or avoid calling attention to their needs. Family vacations have been ruined countless times for lack of public toilets. Where leaders can get over their social and cultural hang-ups, communities are more likely to have successful public toilet policy and implementation.

The toilet book

The complexity of our relationship with public toilets is certainly no surprise, but as is the norm, we seldom raise the spectre to consciousness other than in moments of immediacy. The staggering complexity to how matters of the toilet manifest themselves in the public sphere is detailed in “Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing“ by Harvey Molotch and Laura Noren. As a public toilet enthusiast, a book I couldn’t resist. ”Toilet” brings our discomforts to a head in a series of essays by academics across the sub-fields of social, biological, and architectural sciences.

The delicate queasiness of discussing openly the real and diverse needs for public toilets are exposed in “Toilet.” The central question of a lack of public toilets in America is certainly among them, but entire essays or sections are also dedicated to other questions. For instance, laws typically call for parity in toilet distribution between genders, yet where there are male-female toilets, women still tend to have longer lines. At times, like a theater event, those lines can stretch 4x as long as the male line. Why is this? The answer may surprise you. And, if we are going to discuss gender, needn’t we consider the impact our binary approach has on the transgendered? A solution would be more unisex toilets, but Victorian-age social hang-ups still exist in many places.

We’ve spent an inordinate amount of time, energy and resources trying to find “solutions” to our discomforts only to find trade-offs at every corner. For example, more than most cultures, Americans often contend with feelings of shame when others are in our presence when the odd sounds of defecation* escape us. A solution would be toilet stalls separated more robustly from other stalls–heavy doors, thick walls and such. Of course, complete isolation provides more opportunity for other behavior to occur that a particular community may frown upon–drug-use, sexual activity, and sleeping to name a few. Soundproof segregation also becomes a safety concern if one needs to call for help.

Design <-> Behavior

Ultimately, “Toilet” is about design and how it shapes our behavior, and how our perceptions of our own behavior shape the design. With many questions about design, it becomes a question of who is being served? Are those being served, served with respect and dignity? Are there ways to better serve full communities? The visitors to those communities? Can we be adults about the matter long-enough to move past prejudices and hang-ups about what is gross, taboo and yuck?

We mostly defer to the individual to plan for the expected and unexpected toilet needs rather than develop and implement cohesive public planning around this core issue. At the root of this isn’t the lack of need, but the lack of willingness to face the uncomfortable. The essays in “Toilet” suggest that when we don’t embrace toilet needs, we discourage participation in the public sphere, because by not providing inviting toilets people either retreat into the private realm, only to come out as consumers, or they leave and never come back.

After all, we have needs.

Have a public toilet story you’d like to share? 

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* Paruresis? I had to look it up: “is a type of phobia in which the sufferer is unable to urinate in the (real or imaginary) presence of others, such as in a public restroom.” It’s counter-part is parcopresis, or being unable to defecate without a certain level of privacy.

We wrote about toilets twice before, once in a discussion about time and another in a brief about Traverse City’s quest for a downtown public toilet. The DDA has a public toilet sub-committee that could benefit from reading this book.

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Chatter

Washington D.C. was hard to ignore this past week, here’s a collection of perspectives:

What’s the hubbub?  House Republicans continue to go for shock and awe (StreetsBlog) instead of sound, balanced policy, leading Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a republican, to exclaim, “It’s the worst transportation bill I’ve ever seen during 35 years of public service.” (Politico).

Their version of a transportation bill takes an archaically  myopic view of transportation needs (T4A) and puts Safe Route to School programs (MLUI), pedestrian and bicycling funding (A.B.) and public transit (Daily Yonder) perilously close to being dropped. Yet, highways running though communities are placed on the fast-track (Good) and the bill’s priorities “thwart efforts to design a system that supports Michigan’s economic recovery“ (MEC). Is there a positive side? Perhaps (B.Portland) and it’s likely that specific bill has little chance of surviving 100% intact (Stretsblog). It’ll be news again mid-February (M-Bike) Related Retweets:

• RT @T4America : As someone just said to us, it’s a pretty sad day for Raquel Nelsons everywhere. Some states will address dangerous streets, some won’t.
• RT @Andybikes : Proposed highway bill is so 1950s – just for cars. Its like a communications bill for 8-track users. #drivingbackwards@bikeleague #bike

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Complete Streets for the elderly (AARP) is one thing, but the realization that “we’ve engineered physical activity out of children’s lives” (NYTimes) with drastic results for public health needs to change (DHC) Is there a shangri-la for urban design? Dr. Richard Jackson is looking:

(Showing in Grand Rapids, but not Traverse City)

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#LongRead: Commoner David Bollier explores the role of public space and the citizen (Bollier) and elsewhere, why the places we live put a smile on our faces (Atlantic Cities)

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Ahh, Montreal. 382 Days on a bike.

via Guillaume Blanchet with a honk-out to JRW

Have a weekend.

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Contributions greatly appreciated.

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Click for larger view and here for Downtown Traverse City Bicycle Parking Info

This map is an inventory of all the inverted “U’s”, horned bollards, grill racks and bike lockers (inside the parking decks). In total, just over 120 parking options within the DDA district, most of which provide two slots.

See any missing? Where are the holes?
What would you do to improve bicycle parking in downtown?

* Thank you to the DDA for completing this inventory and providing the map.

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Contributions greatly appreciated.

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Below is my letter to the  18-representatives (MDOT) serving on Michigan’s Complete Streets Advisory Council (MI-CS). They will be reporting to the State’s Transportation Commission on model policy language for the state policy to be adopted in August. At their meeting last week, they expressed interest in hearing from the public using the following email:

 MDOT-CompletestreetsAC@michigan.gov

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To the Representatives of the Complete Streets Advisory Council,

Thank you for your time and energy serving on this important committee. Your recommendations are a critical piece to fulfilling the goals of the Complete Street public acts passed in 2010 and your results are anticipated in communities across the state of Michigan, 63 of which have already passed policies of their own. I trust that your contribution is a step towards a less disjointed process regarding transportation policy and implementation, as well as a step towards a larger goal of better connected communities.

There was discussion at your January meeting of what exactly does Complete Streets mean. The following description was written by transportation specialist Dan Burden in a recent article for the American Association of Retired Persons. The following passage sums up the basic premise of a complete street:

A complete street is one that accommodates all people who use a roadway, not just those in cars. It offers a safe way for people to travel, regardless of their age, ability or mode of transportation—whether walking, biking, using transit or driving a car. Where we have complete streets, people have choices in transportation, including an option that is right outside each door, is affordable and is healthy.

It is significant that he is writing for AARP and that their organization has been one of the biggest supporters of complete streets initiatives. As he points out, 20% of seniors don’t drive and often remain at home due to lack of transportation options in part because the design of our streets and other public spaces make it difficult, if not perilous to choose another mode. Similar issues exist throughout the age demographic, where people of all ages and abilities feel that their only choice is to drive a car, even when other options would make sense. Your work is step towards a more diversified transportation system.

Not Just a Trend

In Traverse City, there has been a complete streets movement, if not by name than by desire, for at least 40-years. The concerns are primarily of context and safety. People are concerned about high speeds on streets running through neighborhoods, whether they be state trunklines or not, because they drastically impact property values, livability and freedom of movement. In Traverse City, as in other communities, these incomplete streets create barriers of movement and access. They are also threats to life and limb, with the occasional tragic reminder all too frequent.

A few days before Christmas and on a state trunkline in Traverse City, an 89-year-old man was struck by a driver unable to stop their vehicle in time. The intersection where this occurred has been a constant source of community consternation over the last few years. Yet, the context of the area it is located remains designed to reinforce high speeds of motor vehicles. It is a 40-mph zone running through a neighborhood and next to parkland; it is a rural 4-lane highway in the middle of a city. The man who died was simply attempting to walk across the street. Likely, he was going home as he lived less than a block away.  As a state, we need to value the personal liberty to walk in our neighborhoods without an over-bearing fear to be struck and killed.

Each of you represents a different stakeholder group. There is someone representing the environment, another representing those with disabilities, another the bicyclists, traffic engineers, law enforcement, planning, and so on. From the perspective of an engaged citizen, those distinctions are less relevant than that you are members of communities. At the community level we don’t engage strictly as stakeholders of this or that, we engage as neighbors who each have many different needs and perspectives that are often shared. We trust that by coming together a shared vision will help improve our communities.

A strong message and policy at the state level, that treats the public rights of way as places where people live and connect, is a critical step towards building a Michigan that provides for all of our needs.

Again, thank you for your dedication and commitment.

Sincerely,

Gary Howe

Traverse City, MI

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Contributions greatly appreciated.

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Last week, I attended the State of Michigan’s Complete Streets Advisory Council (MI-CS) meeting held in Lansing. This group consists of 18-representatives (MDOT) representing different stakeholder groups. They are tasked with making policy recommendations to the State Transportation Commission by the beginning of the summer in order for that commission to have time to enact complete streets policy by August 2012.

Although a bit wonky, this is critical work. The policy created will go into effect across the state influencing the process for construction and re-constructing of roadways by MDOT, road commissions and engineering departments. Afterwards, communities will still have trouble spots in the public right of ways, but they will have an additional, and I trust persuasive, state policy tool to implement projects that put safety and place as paramount, as opposed to simply moving cars at high speeds.

At the meeting, there was some confusion amongst the council about what complete streets actually are and what it means. For instance, some representatives were concerned that it meant every road needs to have a bike lane. Or, that the state will be forcing communities to implement sidewalks without fully understanding the specifics at the local units. This isn’t the intention of the law.

Key to that progress is the fundamental realization that complete streets policy is about redefining the process to include planning and design aimed at accommodating all users in the context of a transportation network that works within the character of place. In short, designing streets that make a place better and serve more needs than simply being places for people to drive through.

The advisory council is still finding its way (aren’t we all). They meet again in April and public comment to help them reach a shared vision is encouraged. I made  an un-prepared public comment at the meeting and will send a follow-up email soon. I’m working on a draft of what I will send that I will post here tomorrow morning.

I encourage readers to send the advisory council a quick message at the following email:

MDOT-CompletestreetsAC@michigan.gov

A few things they need to hear:

• The impact safer and more inviting streets will have for you and your community.
• Why redesigning our approach to public right of ways is important for future needs.
• Tell them a story.

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Contributions greatly appreciated.

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The Dutch commitment to cycling and transit didn’t just magically appear, it was a choice against considerable odds associated with the onslaught of hyper-consumerism in the name of progress.

Two conditions galvanized political will to change course, the slaughter of children and elderly whose freedom of movement was limited by the growing commitment to the automobile and the oil/energy crisis of the 1970′s that showed clearly the un-sustainability of a reliance on imported fuel.

The result: leaders of The Netherlands made a choice to invest in a more conservative path forward that created a sensible transportation system that put people first. The rest is a history with enviable results.

via markenlei

The solution was found in the political will on a national and municipal level, with both decision-makers and planners, to deal with this situation by turning away from car-centric policies and making way for alternative transport like cycling.”

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Related: A Dutch intersection to indeed envy. 

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Contributions greatly appreciated.

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A couple of weeks ago, Traverse City kicked off a public phase of what has been dubbed the corridor study. The project objective is to come away with revitalization plans for 5 of the City’s most infamous streets. Garfield Ave., Eighth St., Fourteenth St., E. Front and W. Front are included in the study being conducted by Houseal Lavigne Associates, a firm that specializes in “Community Planning, Urban Design, and Economic Development.“

Yes, we’ve seen these processes before and many have not come to fruition. For example, the City invested tens-of-thousands of dollars and countless citizen volunteer hours into a model for easing the negatives on Division St. (CS:CC) and Grandview Parkway (MW) in 2010 and 2011. Both those plans are sitting on a shelf somewhere and the mere mention of the “R” word makes the commissioners and staff quiver in their saddles (click here for an overview of the R word).

Yet, this corridor project, funded by a federal livability grant, has potential and is a worthy cause. An 8th St. revitalization would be a game-changer and Garfield Ave. is, relatively speaking, an easy one. Despite my nature, I remain optimistic.

The first meeting held on January 11 had a healthy, mostly positive showing of citizens who understand the issue is greater than moving traffic. Most of the comments expressed were about redesigning the corridors into better places, and in turn, places that better serve the needs of residents and visitors alike. It is early in the process, so we might as well dream big.

Public input is a major part of the process and you can do so online by making your asset map.

Have you made your planner map yet?  What do you trust will happen?

Click through to start your own map

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Contributions greatly appreciated.

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Recently on Henry Morgenstein’s “Essays”, he calls attention to the planning truth that goeth unspoken: the power of a healthy grid of streets.

If you have a grid of ten street by ten streets – you can all envision that – if you seek to go by car from one corner of the ten street grid to the other far corner, there are 184,000 possible ways to do that.  You heard correctly, 184,000 ways to get from point A to point B.”

He continues, applying the analogy to Traverse City.

The point of all this?  If you make one major road — the Old Town by pass for instance — they’ll all come roaring down that wide & welcoming way — and it will soon be stinky, clogged, overcrowded, noisy….

But if you leave the situation alone, some will come down tenth, some will go down seventh, some will take State, others Cass, others union.”

Traverse City residents and fearful fearless leaders have heard this here before … and here (MW). The lesson repeated over and over and over and over is: maximize your grid while treating all your streets as livable streets (StreetFilms). Do it responsibly, of course. Slow our 2-3 ton beasts down and stop investing in ”car cannons”– those arterial speed zones that border and divide the community. The attempt to “solve” our traffic problem with more arterials is insane in the full Einsteinian sense of the word.

To flip the approach, start thinking about people cannons (MW).

Henry concludes with a call for sanity. Balance.

For at least the next 20 years, let us focus all our resources on making towns navigable by foot, by car, by trolley, by bus, by train, by tram.  It is not so much that we will ban cars as that we will make the alternatives enticing, fun, inexpensive, readily available, safe & warm.  Everything that cars are now.

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Of course, isn't this how we arrived at our current problems?

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Thoughts?

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Contributions greatly appreciated.

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