KLo is upset by this apparent meddling by the New York City Council in the number of male/female restrooms required in public facilities.

I fail to see the cause for umbrage. Given that there are going to be ordinances specifying that there be restrooms at all (and there are much more serious depredations on liberty than such ordinances to be concerned with), why not respond to clear demand, and establish a sufficient number of each type? It's blindingly obvious that (mostly male) architects seem clueless as to the disparity between male/female toiletry issues. When there are consistently long lines for something, it's an indication of a shortage of supply, and one to which the market seems impervious, given the captive-audience nature of the situation in, say, a sports stadium. I remember when the Getty first opened, it had a serious shortage of bathrooms for both sexes, and as an engineer was appalled at Meier's apparent lack of common sense, focusing instead on pure aesthetics. It would be nice if the designers would get a clue, but given that they continue not to, I've got a lot bigger things to worry about than this.

I have always been puzzled by the lack of common sense in dealing with this problem. If you look at virtually any architectural plan you will see that the layout has equal numbers of plumbing fixtures in both men’s and women’s bathrooms with some of those used for urinals in the men’s rooms While this makes for a neat clean plumbing stack, but it ignores basic physiology. I’m not sure how other men feel but I see a toilet in a men’s room as an emergency only receptacle while women see them as a necessity for obvious reasons. Changing the plan to an “L” shaped configuration with the men’s room sacrificing a couple (or more) of the stalls would go a long way in relieving the situation.

> I fail to see the cause for umbrage. Given that there are going to
> be ordinances specifying that there be restrooms at all

Circa 1980, public health laws in New York State required all restaurants to have restrooms *except* in New York City -- and many restaurants in New York City did not have restrooms. That may have changed, but knowing NYC, I wouldn't count on it.

I went to a firefighter's exposition in the Charlotte coliseum some years ago. We were there all weekend. There were very few female firefighters, volunteer or paid, back then. (There's still a large gap, but that's another discussion.)

Since there were so few of us, we each had our own stall with some to spare. And we pretty much all went to the head at the same time, usually just after a seminar let out.

On the other hand, the line was out the door and then some for the men's room. We women laughed our asses off (and some of the men at least admitted they could now better sympathize with women on the subject).

I can guarandamntee you that if the usual situation were reversed and men's restrooms had lines out the door while women's restrooms had plenty of stalls, restroom facilities in public venues would be totally redesigned. Yesterday.

As Rand said, you'd think they'd be willing to address an obvious supply shortage in order to please customers.

(Another thing male architects don't think about is that women more often than not take young children to the bathroom. You can take a young boy into a ladies' room, but nobody in their right mind would take a young girl into a men's room. So if a couple is out with their daughter, guess who she goes with? Even it the child is a boy, he and Dad take less time because using a urinal takes less time.)

You can take a young boy into a ladies' room, but nobody in their right mind would take a young girl into a men's room.

Where did you get that idea? I had seen it plenty of times.

This is a bit off the main topic, but not by much.

Some years ago I heard a story about an architectural blunder made in the design of new monastery. The architect simply forget to put in toilet facilities. The head of the monastery wrote on the design "Suntne angeli?" ("Are they angels?" for the Latin challenged.) The problem was corrected.

I live in the Maryland suburbs. The oh so lovely DC Metro was designed without public toilets intentionally as a cost saving measure. It's possible to spend up to two hours traveling from one place (say home) to another (say work) via this system. It is possible to beg the station master permission to use employee facilities if the need is great enough. The fact that these crackpots can get away with such nonsense is appalling.

In general the American attitude to such a basic human function needs fixing. Are we dominated by nuts?

Wow, so the DC Metro doesn't have public toilets at all? I only use the Metro once in a blue moon and never had the need during a commute. I always assumed that there were facilities for the passengers tucked away in a corner somewhere.

I recall that the NY subway's bathrooms were notoriously bad for a while. They had serious problems with vandalism, lack of regualar cleaning, and bad people taking up near permanent residence in them to provide various "goods and services" of an illicit nature. Maybe the DC designers feared the same problems and opted to take the easy way out.