http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2008-08-15-seattle-toilets_N.htmSEATTLE (AP) — City officials have finally gotten rid of five high-tech self-cleaning toilets that cost Seattle $5 million — but sold online for just $12,549.
The city installed the modernistic stand-alone toilets four years ago, hoping they would provide tourists and the homeless a place to do their business while downtown. But the automated loos became better known for drug use and prostitution than for relief.
Neighbors and analysts said they were less cost-effective than regular public restrooms, and in May, the City Council voted to sell them on eBay. After a failed first attempt, when a $89,000 minimum failed to attract a single bid, the city revised its strategy in hopes of sparking a bidding free-for-all.
But despite more than 9,000 combined page views, only 148 bids were cast.
One of the five toilets, which currently graces the downtown waterfront, sold for $4,899, but the average sale was just over $2,510.
It had nothing to do with tourists--tourists are generally scared away from the parts of town where they were located (nowhere useful to me, that's for sure). They were installed for the comfort of people who are already quite used to relieving themselves on the ground in public.
That's the way government-people think. It is similar to their decision to route all the new trollies and subways through welfare housing projects, to connect the "workers" to ostensible employers. A huge fraction of the inhabitants are either over or under working-age, even if they wanted or were forced into jobs.
Every single member of the Seattle City Council should be asked to remove him/herself from office, starting with Jan Drago.
