4th & Hill APT Still Waiting for Service
Eric Richardson
[Flickr]
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Walking around today I noticed that the Automated Public Toilet at 4th & Hill has still not yet entered service. The site was fenced off for foundation work back in April, and the APT itself has been on-site since summer.
It's good to see that even though the Pershing Square APT has been up and running since May, and Skid Row's APTs are all up and functional, we can still count on these installations taking a good chunk of a year each. Particularly handy is that there's no signage to indicate the facility isn't in service -- just a missing display and a lack of instructions.
BusTard on November 19, 2007, at 02:10PM – #1
The APT on 6th Street on the western edge of Skid Row is not working, nor is the one a few blocks west on 5th.
Eric Richardson (@blogdowntown) on November 19, 2007, at 02:32PM – #2
Those APTs get serviced daily, so it wouldn't surprise me if they're back in service.
M on November 20, 2007, at 09:17AM – #3
Ok... so I've got to ask. I do not get downtown much so I have not been able to investigate myself. On an average day, say in the late afternoon early evening, how clean are the APT's? All too often with publicly accessible toilets, they get really messy really fast.
John on November 20, 2007, at 10:13AM – #4
The toilets are self cleaning. They are completely sprayed down after each use - 24 hours a day by power washers inside the unit. THat is part of the reason why they are so expensive.
However, the city has been completely negligent about providing utility service to these units to turn them on. Another embarrassing example of a great idea getting screwed up by negligent city employees who cannot just follow through finish the project.
One of the most easily fixable problems on the street is providing waste facilities for homeless or for just regular people walking the street. How can they possibly make it so complicated? They build $500,000 bathrooms and then let them sit inoperable for 6 months!
Could someone tell me why people aren't getting fired over this??
-John
Morris on November 20, 2007, at 11:06AM – #5
Could someone tell me why people aren't getting fired over this??
Government employee unionism combined with a sense of self-entitlement, added to a healthy dose of lazy, anything-goes urban politics.
Eric Richardson (@blogdowntown) on November 20, 2007, at 12:10PM – #6
John: To be fair, I believe they're $250,000 toilets, not $500,000 ones.
downtown toilet on November 20, 2007, at 04:45PM – #7
but i look like a million bucks to someone who needs to go.
Metro Rapid on November 20, 2007, at 09:44PM – #8
"...by negligent city employees who cannot just follow through finish the project..."
In legal terms, this is assuming facts not in evidence.
Besides the realities of a bureaucracy as large as the multiple City departments required to connect these toilets to the City's services (ask a contractor or developer how long that can take them on a private project), the idea that civil servants should be fired for what may very well be a political of budget delay is arrogant and misguided.
The entire point of Civil Service (which outdates most City employee unions) is to protect professional workers from the whims of political appointments. In other words, if so and so's friend becomes the Director of a City department (a political appointment) they can't fire everyone in the rank and file and replace them with more friends.
Additionally, when it works right, Civil Service protections ensure that public employees willing to step forward with knowledge or evidence of wrongdoing by public officials need not fear for the security of their employment as a result.
Are their "lazy" employees in Civil Service? Sure. But no more or less than there are lazy employees in any work environment.
And if you don't think Civil Service employees can be fired, sit in on a Board of Civil Service Commissioners meeting and find out that it happens all the time.
BusTard on November 22, 2007, at 01:50AM – #9
M: The toilets are self-cleaning.
My years at an Agency of infamy taught me how to capture in vivid colour that which most folk cannot comprehend with respect to the introduction of camers. (No, I did not invent the colonoscope.)
"Metro Rapid," I enjoy your out-dated outbursts as well as your 1960s-styled capitalisation of every damned Proper Noun available. (As I fancy myself a bit of a philologist, lemme tell those of you wondering what I mean: english was a bit of a bastard tongue from lower german, and in german, every proper noun is capitalised; it is trend that is reviled in style books but that american folk over 55 tend to not be able to not eliminate when they hammer at the typer—or computer, as the case tends to be these days.)
Now, in case my aside about M-R's aside has taken readers aside, lemme get back to the point that needs to be observed: if those who are well-paid by tax-payer dollars were hard-put to relieve themselves—or better yet, forced to share the very facilities they neglect owing to their not having to worry about them (a good example are the MTA buses one might see frequently being towed, as opposed to LAPD car, which are nearly never out of service)—then the only shit we would have to worry about would be the offal offered by aging Civil Servants such as Metro Rapid.
In the meantime, there is a story that no one (save myself; even the other BusBenchers seem to understand that there is something amiss that is erupting) has yet to observe about the APTs and their olive-drab-dressed cousins, and I am curious when someone might find the time to figure out all this shit.
Eric, I was under the impression that they were half-million-dollar toilets; I suppose that they were less, which is why they usta be two bits for use and are now free of charge. Are they working yet?
Metro Rapid on November 22, 2007, at 04:27PM – #10
BusTard, that's an amazing analysis. Very impressive. A+ for burning the midnight oil on this one!
Browne on November 22, 2007, at 05:04PM – #11
In case anyone cares the 4th and Hill toilet as of today still not working, but isn't the Angel's Flight spot the communal public toilet? It's ok to take a whizz there, right? I mean with the army of pigeons that take little birdie pooh-poohs...I would really think it would be ok for humans to take mini pooh-poohs.
Humans have just as many rights as rats with wings.
Browne host of the LA Toi-Let Tour(s).
BusTard on November 25, 2007, at 09:56PM – #12
The APT on 4th and Hill now has its coin slot (barely protected wires were still not covered as late as earlier last week) but is still not in service. The APT on Hill remains out of service; the LED display now displays only its fully lit fields. (A week or so ago it clearly stated it was out of service.) The weekend newsagent nearby stated it has been out of service for a while now. The one on 6th has been back in service for a few days. While I never observed any of the APT service personnel, there was no shortage of meter maids in the area of the three APTs, especially the one on 6th.