Halle-loo-jah.
New York finally joined the commodern age yesterday, with the opening of the first of 20 automatic public restrooms.
For 25 cents, the sleek, if boxy, new bathroom in Madison Square Park provides 15 minutes of shame-free potty time.
But in order to keep out the drunken riffraff and prevent after-midnight mischief, the bathroom will be closed between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m., officials said.
“For decades, New Yorkers have had their fingers – and legs – crossed waiting for this day,” Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said.
Even though the toilets are fully automatic, the Spanish firm Cemusa, which is providing the bathrooms along with new bus shelters and newsstands as part of a $1.4 billion franchise agreement, will send maintenance crews by twice a day.
The long-awaited facilities offer just the right combination of amenities and annoyances to ensure New Yorkers – who have long complained that there is more toil in this city than toilets – still have something to whine about.
Drop in a quarter and the automatic doors slide open over an excruciating 15 seconds. It then takes another 15 seconds for the doors to close – which will no doubt seem like an eternity in the event of an emergency.
The 90-second automatic cleaning and disinfectant system, which kicks in after each use, leaves the interior sweet-smelling and germ-free – but as a result, everything, especially the floors, is always wet.
Toilet paper is dispensed with a push of a button, but only 16 inches at a time, and after three pushes the stingy loo no longer has a square to spare.
There is no bathroom attendant, but one can be reached remotely by intercom. The sink dispenses soap and water automatically, but the hand dryer blows only moderately warm air.
The New Yorkers who were among the first to christen the toilet said it was a welcome, if imperfect, addition to the streetscape.
As public toilets go, “this is the Cadillac,” said Ted Paster, 45, a computer engineer. “Certainly much better than Grand Central Station. But it seems to waste a lot of water, and the hand dryer doesn’t work at all.”
Felicia Allen, a carpenter who has been working on a construction site across the street, said it was luxurious compared to the portable toilets she and her colleagues had been using.
“It’s wonderful and very clean,” she said. “I would use it again – even though the toilet paper that came out was a little wet. We have 40 to 50 men on the site sharing one portable bathroom.”
UPS driver Marc Pierre Louis, 48, who said he often has to beg to use the facilities, agreed.
“They should put one on every corner in the city,” he said.