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Seattle toilets: Going, going, gone

Seattle’s five automated toilets are on the road. The toilets were loaded onto flat-bed trucks last night and are en route to an Ebay auction winner who paid $12,500 for the toilets that have set Seattle back $5 million.

Toilets being loaded onto trucks outside Victor Steinbrueck park

The German-made Hering-Bau toilets cost about $544,000 each to install and about $128,000 to maintain. In some other cities using the toilets, those costs are offset by selling ads on and within the units. Seattle law precluded posting ads on our units.

The high maintenance costs and problems with drug use and prostitution meant the toilets had to go after only five years of use.

They were first listed on eBay in mid-July with a minimum bid of $89,000 each. There were no bidders.

The toilets were re-listed Aug. 4 with no minimum bids.

Comparable new units are now selling for around $200,000.

The city council overrode a mayoral veto in 2001 to install the toilets throughout downtown. But a report released in March said the toilets are the least cost-effective way for the city to provide public restrooms and said they were magnets for illegal activity.

Racecar Supply of Rochester won all five auctions, according to the Associated Press. The owner told an AP reporter that two of the units will grace the South Sound Speedway. He plans to sell the other three.

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This entry was posted by Shawna Gamache on Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 9:24 am and is filed under Seattle lifestyle, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • Adam P

    I think that the city tried to solve the problem of public urination in the wrong manner. It looks as if they looked to Europe for a solution but they chose the wrong one. People in the US are unwilling to pay for restrooms which is why they failed, however in a good part of Europe you pay to use all public and some private WC’s.

    I think that a more appropriate solution would be public urinals like the ones found in Amsterdam. I prefer the old design much more but I think these would go a long way in reducing the number of men urinating in the street. Yes it does not serve women but how many women feel comfortable using a public urinal?

  • Adam P

    PS follow to the link see some pictures I took while in Amsterdam.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/bgtothen/2839897889/
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/bgtothen/2839897409/

  • Shawna Gamache

    The regional head at Hering-Bau told me that the toilets have also been successfully used in Canada on a pay-toilet basis. Toronto just got a half dozen of them.

    In the U.S., the ad model has helped the toilets get a revenue stream without cost to the public.

    I think other U.S. cities, like Seattle, have hopes that providing free toilets will help them have cleaner streets (and provide a much needed service to the resident homeless population). These toilets really were meant to target the homeless population, but I don’t think the city realized how much it would cost to keep them running.

    In some U.S. cities with the auto toilets, they’ve made enough money off the ads to also pay for restroom attendants and/or police monitoring, cutting down on the illicit activities.

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