Idea #7: What Community Toilet Scheme?

Another day, and another council announces it might close some public toilets and pay businesses to let the public use theirs instead (Tendring Council, in case you’re keeping score).

Not necessarily a bad thing. 10 public toilets can become 100 community toilets for the same price. But whilst public toilets are visible in the street, recognisable, and permanent; community toilets are hidden within businesses, not well understood by the public, and the participants frequently change.

So how do you communicate a Community Toilet Scheme?

There’s the slightly inadequate sticker in the window, which you have to know to look for and which some shops are reluctant to display.

Other than that you’ve got three options: Signposts – today’s topic, Maps – tomorrow’s topic, maybe…, and Apps – see ‘Open Data’ – a whole other topic! *dramatic sigh*

Idea #5: Bus Timetables

I just did this for a presentation and figured I may as well put it on the blog. I’d half abandoned the ‘simple ideas’ aspect of this blog before I really began (I like to think that I’ve been working instead on much bigger fish) but I’ll try and add things that I do draw up as I go along.

After all, there really isn’t a ground-breaking idea that will solve all the problems of public toilets, but rather a lot of little improvements (that amount to little more than common sense!)

What are we looking at? The little public toilet symbols show which stops have public toilets (totally made up, by the way).

I spent yesterday at an Incontinence Conference, as you do, attended by many people from the Brunel Older Peoples’ Reference Group. They were quite frustrated by the lack of public toilet provision at transport hubs, in particular bus stations.

“Us older people, we travel by bus! We’ve got our bus pass but there’s no where to go to the toilet when we get there!”

(I paraphrase, but that was the gist.)

Would it be worth having information on bus timetables and bus stops that shows which stops are served by a public toilet?

Of course this assumes that there are some!

And as bus routes cross several local authorities, some data wouldn’t hurt either.

Idea #1: Fingerposts

This idea for improved pedestrian signs doesn’t just show which direction the toilets are in.

They tell the person which facilities are provided, how far they are and how accessible they are.

Would this be useful to you?

Should this information be included on existing signs?

or is it too much detail, unnecessary confusion and expense?

Please vote as to whether I should keep working on it, and leave any thoughts (comments, criticisms, ideas, Anything!) in the comments below. They’re vital to developing better loos for all!