Metro Vancouver has updated their map of Regional and Municipal park washrooms: those available for public access (green) and those no longer accessible due to COVID-19 (red).
The map is very revealing of the absence of washrooms where they’re needed the most: downtown Vancouver.
Two recommendations: (1) a map showing washrooms in private spaces (hotels, malls, departments stores, etc). (2) More public washrooms everywhere – especially transit interchanges.
In fairness to TransLink, such washrooms are nightmares of maintenance, and very expensive propositions if they are to be supervised and continually cleaned. Perhaps time to change the law and allow for a small charge (common in Europe), payable through Compass, that would also allow free use for those eligible.
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Um, for the proportion of the population that is color blind (particularly red green color blind) this map is not too helpful.
Cities without public washrooms are barbaric, as they force people to piss in alleyways or feel guilty about going to Starbucks or MacDonalds, and even those are becoming locked. Short term: the city rents a while whal of fibrecan – jiffy pots or create their own sustainable system of portable well built composting toilets, even. I mean, C’mon – isnt it the greenest city? Not by a long shot – but here is a service whose time is long past due. Urban centres of old ha them. Like at victory Square and the Carnegie Centre. Why is that so hard?!
I wouldn’t rely on this map, as it’s not accurate. I can see several washrooms in Vancouver that it says are open that actually have been shut since late March. Also, most coffee shop washrooms aren’t open for customers either, so don’t get yourself a grande drink downtown because there’ll be nowhere to offload it afterwards. Cafes that are struggling to survive can’t afford the extra staff involved to keep washrooms C19 compliant.
Lack of open washrooms the reason I’ve only walked 4km in total since March 20th. I carry a (self made) map of all the open ones on my bike and that determines where I can ride – it’s much quicker to find scarce open washrooms by cycling.
Consider carrying a discharge bottle in a backpack ..
Are you a male Thomas?
Are you an old male?
Are you an old white male?
Are you an old white privileged male?
Hmmm… reading your posts one would never have guessed.
This doesn’t match the dataset available on Vancouver’s Open Data portal:
https://opendata.vancouver.ca/explore/dataset/public-washrooms/map/?location=14,49.28147,-123.11387
How does someone add to this list of washrooms?