A Hands-Free, Self-Cleaning Bathroom for Transit Stations

It's not easy to find a bathroom when you're traveling on public transportation in the United States. Mass transit agencies tend to keep facilities closed up because they're very costly to monitor and maintain. It's just too big a burden when the station agents who are supposed to be helping riders instead become bathroom attendants, janitors, and transit cops in one. Some systems have stopped including bathrooms in station designs at all.

Still, sometimes, you just gotta go. And for those occasions, Atlanta believes it's found an answer: a high-tech, hands-free, self-cleaning, vandal-resistant, loiter-proof bathroom built to address every mass transit agency concern and offer safe and sanitary service to the fare-paying public. This super-loo opened about a month ago in MARTA's Lindbergh Center Station, with plans for a second in East Point Station. If the two pilots work well, they might just change the way transit agencies across the country view station bathrooms.