Your Public Toilet Is in Trouble

According to signs posted in three languages, prohibited acts at Seattle's five automated public toilets (APTs) include sex, drinking, and drugging. But soon, you might be prohibited from using the toilets altogether.

City Hall officials say the four-year APT lease experiment is over, and the deteriorating silver facilities will be closed and removed. In their places will be expanded use of nearby private and city rest rooms, according to a plan being formulated by Seattle Public Utilities.

At least three council members say they will likely back a plan to remove the APTs, which have been vandalized and become such crime magnets that they are locked overnight. Located in the Pike Place Market, Chinatown, Waterfront, Pioneer Square, and Broadway districts, the toilets' button-operated doors are temperamental and their interior floors have degraded.

Council member Sally Clark says SPU was asked "to come up with alternatives, soon, doing away with public toilets." The idea is to "align" with businesses to open their rest rooms to tourists and the homeless. "We have been asked to give [SPU] more time to develop a plan, and have been told that they will get back to us in the next several weeks," adds City Council President Richard Conlin.

The once-gleaming rest rooms with automatically retracting toilet seats (for cleaning) were approved in 2001 and installed in 2004. Insiders say the city can cut its losses by opting out of its 10-year lease with German contractor Hering Bau. A 2007 city report put the $6.6 million contract's buyout costs at $570,000, plus a $50,000-per-toilet removal fee.