SEATTLE — Finding a clean public bathroom in Seattle’s Pioneer Square can feel like a scavenger hunt, but the city says relief is on the way — just in time for a major wave of visitors.
With the FIFA World Cup just a month away, thousands of people are expected to be looking for a bathroom in Pioneer Square and SODO, so four new public bathrooms are being installed through a partnership with a company called Throne Labs.
Seattle’s latest public bathroom rollout on Friday came with all the trappings of a civic event, with ribbon cutting, speeches, applause, and, inevitably, bathroom jokes.
“Today is our first step in delivering Seattle’s number one and number two priority,” Mayor Katie Wilson joked before ceremonially cutting the toilet paper ribbon and making the ceremonial first flush Friday in Pioneer Square.
The city is launching a yearlong pilot program featuring new solar-powered public toilets aimed at tackling a problem Seattle has struggled with for decades: providing safe, clean and accessible restrooms downtown.
For people like Sam Barnard, the need is obvious.
“When this is your only option and it’s filled with trash,” Barnard said, gesturing toward a honey bucket, and then back to the new toilet, “it’s clean, it plays music, it’s wonderful.”
Seattle has been down this road before.
Nearly 20 years ago, the city spent millions on high-tech public toilets that promised automated cleaning systems and multilingual instructions.
“It gives instructions in English and Spanish!” then-City Councilmember Jan Drago said at the time.
But many of those bathrooms were quickly vandalized and became magnets for crime and drug use.
Eventually, the city scrapped the experiment and sold the toilets on eBay for pennies on the dollar.
Now, city leaders insist they’ve learned from those failures.
“I think that we collectively have learned a lot since then about how freestanding toilets like this can work well,” Wilson said.
This time, Seattle is paying the aptly named company Throne nearly half a million dollars to operate the pilot program, with four toilets: two outside Lumen Field and another two near 2nd and Occidental.
Users will need a cellphone to unlock the restroom, and visits will be capped at 10 minutes.
Throne says crews will be on standby during the operating hours, of 7am to 10pm, to keep the facilities clean and respond quickly to problems, suggesting it adds an accountability layer to the operations.
Lisa Howard with the Alliance for Pioneer Square says the city can’t afford not to try.
“I think it’s worth doing that trial and error and seeing what works,” Howard said.
Wilson argues the toilets could ultimately reduce strain on city services by addressing sanitation issues before they become larger public health or policing problems.
“We know that we already spend a lot of time and money addressing sanitation issues that arise because we don’t have public restrooms,” Wilson added. “So I think this is going to be a win-win.”
Now the city is betting that this latest restroom experiment won’t end the same way as the last one.
Whether Seattle leaders look back on this pilot and laugh, or once again find themselves putting money down the drain, remains to be seen.
Throne says it will soon open other toilets at the Lakewood Transit Center, Burien Transit Center and Aurora Village Transit Center.
