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Getting Flush With Toilets
Digesting the Big Apple just got easier, after the New York City government released a new Google Maps layer that displays roughly 1,000 public bathrooms available for public use. The program, called “Ur in Luck,” will also build and renovate 82 public bathrooms over the next five years.
These 1,000 bathrooms in a city of eight million means there’s just one public bathroom per 8,000 people. This ratio is actually higher than the country as a whole, which has just one public bathroom per 12,500 people, according to a 2021 report. In New York City, many public bathrooms date back to the 1930s, lack necessities like toilet paper, and close as early as 4 p.m. Many neighborhoods like SoHo, Chinatown, East Harlem, and Lower Manhattan lack public bathrooms entirely.
