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San Francisco building single public toilet that will cost $1.7 million and won't be completed until 2025

Local officials were set to gather on Wednesday in San Francisco's Noe Valley Town Square to celebrate their latest win: a single public toilet that will cost as much as $1.7 million to build and won't be completed until 2025.

But the celebration was canceled after a San Francisco Chronicle columnist highlighted the "mind-boggling" and "maddening" details of the project.

California Assemblyman Matt Haney told the newspaper that he now considers the price tag "inexplicable."

"When Rec and Park first told us the number, it sounded shockingly high to me," Haney told the San Francisco Chronicle.

"I’m glad that Noe Valley will at some point get a bathroom, but it shouldn’t cost this much, and it shouldn’t take this long, and I’m angry about it. … It’s not something I want to celebrate right now."

A spokesperson for the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department told Fox News Digital that the exorbitantly high cost is due to "onerous demands and unpredictable costs levied by PG&E," construction costs that have skyrocketed 20% to 30% in the past two years, and employment of workers who are being paid a living wage with benefits.

"It’s also important to note that public projects and their overall cost estimates don’t just reflect the price of erecting structures," the spokesperson said. "They include the cost of planning, drawing, permits, reviews, public outreach and construction management."
ROSAL

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Originally posted by 229DAK:
And it will take only minutes for the homeless and druggies to destroy it.

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NWhyT: Seattle to Remove Automated Toilets

By Christopher Maag

July 17, 2008

SEATTLE After spending $5 million on its five automated public toilets, Seattle is calling it quits.

In the end, the restrooms, installed in early 2004, had become so filthy, so overrun with drug abusers and prostitutes, that although use was free of charge, even some of the city’s most destitute people refused to step inside them.

The units were put up for sale Wednesday afternoon on eBay, with a starting bid set by the city at $89,000 apiece.

The dismal outcome coincides with plans by New York, Los Angeles and Boston, among other cities, to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for expansion this fall in their installation of automated toilets stand-alone structures with metal doors that open at the press of a button and stay closed for up to 20 minutes. The units clean themselves after each use, disinfecting the seats and power-washing the floors.

Seattle officials say the project here failed because the toilets, which are to close on Aug. 1, were placed in neighborhoods that already had many drug users and transients. Then there was the matter of cost: $1 million apiece over five years, which because of a local ordinance had to be borne entirely by taxpayers instead of advertisers.

In the typical arrangement involving cities that want to try automated toilets, an outdoor advertising company like JCDecaux provides, operates and maintains them for the municipality in exchange for a right to place ads on public property like bus stops and kiosks. Revenue from the advertisers flows to both the company and the city.

But a strict advertising law here barred officials from such an arrangement, meaning Seattle had to pick up the entire $5 million cost. “That’s a lot of money, a whole lot,” said Ray Hoffman, director of corporate policy for Seattle Public Utilities, the municipal water and sewage agency that ran the project.

MSALA

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How do homeless, drug addicted transients destroy so many $1,000,000 outhouses?

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Originally posted by 229DAK:
And it will take only minutes for the homeless and druggies to destroy it.

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"They include the cost of planning, drawing, permits, reviews, public outreach and construction management."

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...and employment of workers who are being paid a living wage with benefits.

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Originally posted by Jelly:
Why would they need to buy another toilet? Thought san francisco itself was a public toilet.

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Originally posted by oddball:

Years ago, SF had a bunch of fancy public "self cleaning" toilets in the downtown area on Market St, made by some French company, same as the Seattle link above. They quickly became 10 minute hotels for prostitutes, drug addicts, homeless, etc, and quickly ruined for public usage. They are long gone.