Manhattan borough president Mark Levine wants the MTA to make it easier to use bathrooms in the subway system. Yes, we know... hold your jokes about the MTA already being in the toilet. However, there are currently about 60 bathrooms available throughout the system, open from 7am to 7pm- and yes, one of them is, ironically, in Flushing, Queens. Levine wants greater accessibility, asking for longer operating hours and signs leading riders to the facilities.
Levineās request does raise the question, however: would you use a bathroom in the subway if you had to go? WOR street reporter Natalie Migliore appeared on 710 WORās Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program to ask straphangers at the 57th Street station the number one question on our minds.
Migliore found it didnāt take a whiz to address the main concern, that the bathrooms wonāt stay clean or usable. One woman said, āI betcha there wonāt be any toilet paper. Theyāll be doing more stuff in that bathroom than people using the bathroom. There will be people sleeping in there, just doing nasty [stuff], taking baths in there.ā Another rider expanded on that thought: āPeople sleep in them and do their drugs in them. You ever seen, you ever been to one of these bathrooms. Theyāve got needles everywhere. Itās disgusting. Unless they going to have somebody whoās going to take care of it correctly, then there shouldnāt be no bathrooms in the subways.ā
Another woman told Migliore itās not the conditions inside the bathrooms that concern her; itās the conditions outside them. āIt not safe at all. Itās so not safe that I wonāt even bring my son on the train to go anywhere. Friends invite me to go to birthday parties in Manhattan, Iām like, Iām not taking my son on the train. If my husbandās working, Iām not taking my son on the train, because itās just dangerous.ā
Photo Credit: Getty Images