STM won’t pursue public toilets
There were public toilets at Snowdon metro for a couple of years as a pilot project, but the STM is shutting them down and won’t be expanding the experiment because it was too hard to keep them clean enough to be safe.
Philippe Teisceira‑Lessard asks why, if Paris, London, New York and Toronto can maintain public toilets in some of their subway stations, it seems Montreal can’t, especially as we’re short of public facilities in general.
EmilyG 12:14 on 2025-06-18 Permalink
I currently live in the suburbs, and it takes a little while for me to get into town and back. Add to that the fact that I have a few health conditions, and it means that I usually need to find washrooms when I’m in town. It’s not always easy to find them. It leads to situations like buying something at a restaurant to use the washroom, or trying not to drink too much water even on hot days.
Montreal isn’t a good city for public washrooms.
Jane 13:16 on 2025-06-18 Permalink
Montreal is full of people (and I don’t mean you) who don’t deserve nice things. Our “Be ungovernable, appease and enable bad acting!” left wing makes sure of that. It’s like “Leave it like you found it if not better” is a morally repugnant obstacle that no one should have to meet.
Kate 13:23 on 2025-06-18 Permalink
I wasn’t aware that socialists have bad bathroom habits, Jane.
JP 14:04 on 2025-06-18 Permalink
At our work building, we’ve had codes placed on all of the washrooms in the last couple of years. We’ve been told not to share the codes. When couriers and delivery people ask for the code, I don’t give it to them but I do open the door for them. I feel bad, but we have had issues in the past with the state of the washrooms. When I’m downtown I usually try to find a washroom at PVM or the mall….
MarcG 14:09 on 2025-06-18 Permalink
Jane can you link to your full dissertation “Les Maudites Anarchistes are the reason Montreal doesn’t have public washrooms”? I’d like to read the whole thing.
Nicholas 15:36 on 2025-06-18 Permalink
This is just a really simple budget priority. It would cost some money to do, funds are limited, everything is a tradeoff and all the people who could pay for it have chosen not to make it a priority over spending elsewhere or lower taxes. And this is true with public bathrooms in general: transit doesn’t see it as their problem, parks theirs, streets theirs, etc. I was saying the other day, with respect to AC on the metro, that people say, “It’s good enough, I didn’t have that in my day and I survived.” Same with bathrooms. And saying, “Well it would be hard and that money could be better spent elsewhere” is exactly my point: that’s what the majority of the population thinks, and that’s why we don’t have public bathrooms in the metro, or AC, or platform screen doors, etc. If we forced the STM to do it they would; that’s what Ontario did to the TTC for elevators, and next year their whole system will have them. But we don’t, we don’t give them the money to, so they don’t. “Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.”
saintlaurent 15:39 on 2025-06-18 Permalink
If you’re interested in a more detailed look at this issue, the May 2 edition of the NPR Planet Money podcast examined this issue in-depth. tl;dr: It really comes down to money. Cities have decided that there are more important issues for them to spend money on, when you consider the one-time costs of building public toilets (see San Francisco’s famous Noe Valley $1.7M public toilet), and then the ongoing annual costs of maintaining them and keeping them clean and in good working order.
Jane’s observation isn’t entirely off-point. All it takes is for one person to blow up (figuratively speaking) or vandalize a public toilet, and if ten other people try to use it before the maintenance staff even realize there’s a problem, then there’s probably between seven and nine of them who will quickly reach the conclusion that why are we even spending money on these public toilets if the city can’t even keep them usable.?
Ian 20:09 on 2025-06-18 Permalink
I am pretty sure any of us that have kids have had the experience of “I GOTTA GO NOW” and yo uhave to think fast. Even for myself, I have had instants where I just really needed a bathroom but was forced to buy something before they would give the key. Have I seen public bathrooms that look like a shit bomb went off? Yes. Do I think the public needs access to bathrooms? Yes.
Personally, if I see a sign on a bar, restaurant, or cafe that says “toilettes pour clients seulement” I take my business elsewhere.
Screw all of you who don’t have the basic human decency to see that.
su 09:18 on 2025-06-19 Permalink
Surely our private sector investors and developers could finance some well maintained WCs if given tax benefits.
Kevin 09:49 on 2025-06-19 Permalink
You don’t need Jane to write a manifesto, you just need to visit a place where random members of the public/elders keep people in line.
Have you ever seen a senior citizen yelling at random youth to pick up their shit in a park, and the youth actually doing it? That’s the kinda vibe you need to make public toilets happen.
MtlWeb 17:19 on 2025-06-19 Permalink
As someone with ulcerative colitis x 35 yrs, along with 4 abdominal surgeries related to the disease, I can never be more than 5 min from an accessible washroom or else…..Montreal may not be as bad as NY but decent bathrooms are often difficult to find. Read a great book by Canadian Lezlie Lowe (No Place to Go) that details how each major city in NA ranks in regards to access/supplies.
Sad, as at one point, everyone requires access at some point in their life.