Toronto will be getting 20 state of the art public washrooms – they automatically sterilize the floors, sinks, and toilets after each use. They are ultra modern, made of very chic and trendy stainless steel, and they are very expensive. It will cost $1.00 to use them.

Toronto has a great lack of public toilets and the ones that are available are more like outhouses than toilets. It is so problematic that many businesses in the downtown core require you to use a key to get into their washrooms to ensure that only paying customers are using their facilities. While I see their point, what’s a person supposed to do when the need arises? Have you tried to locate a public toilet in a park or just walking around in high traffic areas? In the downtown core if you are not near a department store or a big box store, you have a serious problem.

The toilets are being supplied by Astral Media and they will be responsible for maintaining them. There will be a 1-800 quality line manned by people 24/7 and they have pledged to have graffiti removed from bathrooms, bus shelters or benches within 24 hours of being discovered. They will also be providing new benches, bus shelters, garbage cans, and street furniture – 26,000 fixtures ranging from newspaper boxes to bike racks in public spaces. The program is being financed by ad revenue, with Astral making the profits on advertising revenue generated on bus shelters and information pillars. There will no longer be any advertising on garbage/recycling receptacles or benches. Astral Media has a 20-year contract with they city.

Would you pay $1.00 to use one of these new toilets? I think that it‘s going to be a hard sell and much more of a “got no choice”.