In 9 Years of Work, Just 3 Public Toilets Go Live

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times A public toilet on Madison Avenue between 23rd and 24th Streets in Manhattan.

For more than a generation, bureaucracy, politics and corruption thwarted three successive New York mayors from modernizing the city’s shabby bus shelters, newsstands and public toilets.

Finally, under Michael R. Bloomberg, contracts to build new ones were signed in 2006. After court challenges to the bidding process and other hurdles were overcome, all of the 3,355 sleek bus shelters that were promised were built. So were 304 stylish newsstands.

But the third pipeline in the street furniture franchise has been irreducibly clogged. Only three public toilets have ever been installed. Which means that, at this point, one could almost graduate from a four-year college in the time it takes to install a one-seat public toilet in New York City.

If installation continues at this rate, the 20 automatic toilets for which the city sought bids fully a decade ago will be functioning by about 2065. Of course, even 20 toilets, for a city that swells to nearly 10 million with commuters on a typical weekday, would mean one such facility would serve nearly 500,000 people. Which suggests, perhaps, that the deal was not seriously intended to eliminate the scarcity in the first place.

Pointedly, the contract required up to 20 by the time the franchise expires in 2026.

Still, even if it was just an experiment, a pilot program, an afterthought or a sop to cabbies, food cart vendors and traffic agents before the proliferation of Starbucks, why has it taken nine years since Mayor Bloomberg first awarded the contract to install only three of them?

For one, despite the presumed popular demand, no lavatory lobby has ever materialized.

Unlike the bus shelters and newsstands, the toilets generate no revenue or other material benefit to the city. Cemusa, the Spanish company that officially won the franchise in 2006, loses money on the toilets. And despite New Yorkers’ griping that they’ve got no place to go when they’ve got to go, a number of neighborhoods have responded to the toilets with a not-in-my-backyard indifference, at best.

“There is no delay,” said Risa Heller, a spokeswoman for Cemusa. “The siting and timing is determined by the Department of Transportation. We are in a position to construct and install the automated public toilets as soon as we are given direction by the city.”

But choosing a location, or siting, is almost as complex as awarding the franchise was. The city’s Transportation Department inspects a proposed site and seeks approval from the local community board, the Public Development Corporation and other stakeholders.

The Transportation Department “is committed to siting these amenities only where they’re technically feasible, appropriate for the area, and supported by the community,” said Nicholas Mosquera, a department spokesman. “Identifying these sites has been challenging given the substantial requirements such as access to a sewer, available sidewalk space, clearance from subsurface infrastructure and also community support for the location.”

The first toilet was installed in Madison Square Park early in 2008, followed by one in Corona, Queens, later that year. The third was placed in Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, in 2011.

The city’s Transportation Department is now reviewing other potential locations, including Tillary Street and Williamsburg Bridge Plaza in Brooklyn, Plaza de las Americas in Washington Heights, 125th Street in Harlem and Fordham Plaza in the Bronx. (None is currently contemplated for Flushing, Queens.)

“The agency reviews sites based on a mix of community board and elected official suggestions, proposals from the existing maintenance partners for the plaza locations, and recommendations from local residents,” Mr. Mosquera said.

The trajectory of the Tillary Street site, which was considered last month by the city’s Design Commission, can be traced back seven years, to 2007, when the community board proposed that an automatic public toilet be placed somewhere in the downtown Civic Center area.

A site in nearby Columbus Park was rejected. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority raised an issue about providing facilities nearby for bus drivers between shifts. Negotiations began in 2012 with the parks department and the community board’s district manager about a site across the street near Cadman Plaza Park. They finally agreed on one near the corner of Tillary and Cadman Plaza West.

Once a site is approved, installation takes two to eight weeks. Cemusa estimates that each toilet can cost up to $500,000 to install, depending on its proximity to electric lines, water mains and sewers. Each costs about $40,000 to maintain annually.

Paid advertising is allowed only on those toilets that do not abut parks; only one of the existing three is thus eligible. But that one, in Queens, has not carried any advertising, which typically costs up to $5,000 a month.

The street furniture competition was approved by the City Council in 2002. The city solicited proposals in 2004 and accepted final offers the following year. The Bloomberg administration announced the contract with Cemusa in September 2005, and it was finally voted on by the Franchise and Concession Review Committee in May of the next year.

Cemusa agreed to provide the city with a minimum of $999 million in revenue over 20 years and $398 million in advertising, as well as other benefits. The company says it expects to make, at most, about $90,000 from each toilet over the life of the franchise, averaging 50 customers a day, charging 25 cents per visit.

Iris Weinshall, the former transportation commissioner, was asked in 2006 whether toilet-deprived New Yorkers would be willing to pay for this privilege. After years of delay and a paucity of public toilets, her response remains just as valid today.

“Depends,” she replied, “how much you need to go to the bathroom.”