Comments on: BART escalators caked in human poo

By: Daemonworks

Daemonworks — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 03:16:00 +0000

And the most common argument I hear against public washrooms? “We’d have to pay people to clean them”.

By: jellyfishattack

jellyfishattack — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 06:32:00 +0000

Not so in Toronto (Ontario).

By: hexalm

hexalm — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 00:37:00 +0000

Well, OBVIOUSLY for YOU it’d be incredibly easy to use a pressure washer with the intricacy required for operations you’re describing, because you know everything–but what good is that to the rest of us know-nothings?

I suspect the result of your suggestion would be as useful as flushing a transmission out with water. Good luck with that.

By: Finnagain

Finnagain — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 22:32:00 +0000

’Those people’ sound poor. And the poor don’t need to travel about, do they? Can’t they just be poor at home?

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 22:23:00 +0000

There are stairs. Unfortunately, those fucking slacker disabled people refuse to use them. Not to mention people with small children, people carrying packages and any other group of lazy-ass fatties. Go figure.

By: doogiehowsah

doogiehowsah — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 21:02:00 +0000

Just FYI, I have a sneaking suspicion there’s more to this story. First of all, local blogs like Mission Mission had been reporting on ridiculously lengthy escalator out of service times at Mission stations (one escalator at 16th was out for months and when finally fixed broke again in hours). The story was starting to pick up some media traction, when suddenly the notoriously conservative and homeless-baiting Chronicle gets fed a story that escalators are out of service because of feces, thus causing a cavalcade of disgust and anti-poor/inner-city/homeless sentiment to come crashing down, obliterating the original story of BART ignoring City stations.

The thing is, BART has a long, awful history of poor treatment of its urban stations at the expense of its suburban stations, and their defense of this inequality has always been astonishingly, blatantly classist, and by implication, racist: a response from a BART board member to a complaint I made years ago about the state of 16th St Station infrastructure was met with the response that improvements were useless because “those people” treated the station so badly. Of course, issues like the inadequate fare gates and the single overcrowded escalator to the station platform show BART prejudice that has little to do with how inner city riders behave.

Moreover, of course we all know about BART’s recent trouble with, you know, shooting people, and unilaterally switching off cell phone service to prevent people from protesting about that, and lying about it. So BART has a history of, well, sneakiness, at best. It would be great if rather than just parroting an obviously spoon-fed story to the Chronicle meant to grab gross-out headlines, somebody responsible like Boing Boing actually looked into this to see how BART treats its inner city stations and why it counters bad press with homeless-baiting, um, crap.

By: gjashley

gjashley — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 20:16:00 +0000

Yes investment is needed, and I’m a BART fan … but can you stand there with your hand on your heart and state that BART is ran as efficeintly as it possibly could be?
For example, some agencies contract out vertical/horzontal transportation maintenance to companies who do that as a core business, and it usually leads to greater value and better customer service.

By: EH

EH — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 18:11:00 +0000

As far as the Montgomery station goes, the walls at the top of the escalator lend pretty much the only privacy in the area.

By: mcheshire

mcheshire — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 18:09:00 +0000

Maybe I’m reaching here. The simplest solution may be to replace said escalator with umm… I don’t know… stairs? Could this be a solution for the obesity problem in the country as well? Put every fast food joint ten stories up.

By: EH

EH — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 18:07:00 +0000

Crimony, I’m not suggesting a nuclear sandblaster. However, I am making an assumption that variable pressure would be available, though from these responses I’m not sure it’s been invented yet.

By: GawainLavers

GawainLavers — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 17:54:00 +0000

It’s what happens when your operating budget doesn’t track usage or inflation, and when no one accounts for a surge in maintenance costs once a system reaches end of life. BART is sorely due replacing, but I can’t imagine a project of that scope being accomplished ever again in the US.

By: gjashley

gjashley — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 16:48:00 +0000

San Francisco smells of wee, occasionally poop.
BART escalators fail regularly. I started taking pictures of failed escalators, but gave up because it seemed a daily occurrence. http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=9959745@N02&q=BART#page=0 .
Only a fraction of it can be blamed on poop, generally it’s very poor management and maintenance of assets … which is what happens when you hate your customers.

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 16:21:00 +0000

Then pull a Poppy.

By: Eric Hunt

Eric Hunt — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 15:06:00 +0000

The escalators are shut down overnight. The bottom of the escalator leading from the street to the mezzanine is one of the most private spots on Market or Mission from 1-4am.

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 14:51:00 +0000

The 6 Walmart heirs hold more wealth than 42% of Americans combined. But the problem with America is those inconsiderate people who don’t have a roof over their heads or a place to crap.

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 14:47:00 +0000

I got the impression they were crapping elsewhere in the underground, and it was getting tracked onto the escalators where it gets scraped off the shoes of travelers. Actually crapping on the escalator would require better timing than most of us can muster! Do the homeless eat a lot of fiber?

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 14:44:00 +0000

But wouldn’t that encourage the disabled to become pimps?

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 14:39:00 +0000

Management isn’t cleaning the crud, the guys at the bottom are. Why don’t you go give them your opinion?

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 14:37:00 +0000

I don’t care if you only make me do it once, I’m still gonna suit up like Carl Spackler cleaning the pool at Bushwood.

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 14:35:00 +0000

So give them your phone number and you can do it for half the price.

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 14:34:00 +0000

There’s a One Percenter reply if I ever saw one.

Because there’s a never-ending supply of impoverished people willing to clean up after you, you assume they must all be living to a ripe old age. You don’t consider the possibility that they’re dying like flies, and are replaced by their orphaned children, or the impoverished children of others. Roll down the window of your car and get a sniff of the real world.

By: Jack Arnold

Jack Arnold — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 12:45:00 +0000

But it is illegal to supply public toilettes unless they are wheel chair accessable so……NO public toilettes!

By: Eric Hunt

Eric Hunt — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 11:58:00 +0000

I’m pretty sure that SF made all those fancy toilets free a few years ago.

By: Eric Hunt

Eric Hunt — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 11:56:00 +0000

The Starbucks in SF won’t give you the code or key to the bathroom without a purchase.

By: UhhhClem

UhhhClem — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 07:43:00 +0000

Man, it sure is a good thing we don’t waste public funds on the mentally ill in California any more.

By: Gyrofrog

Gyrofrog — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 05:39:00 +0000

”…and thank you for riding your Metrorail.”

By: Gimlet_eye

Gimlet_eye — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 04:57:00 +0000

Oh, in California we take it way beyond rational. When Caltrans crews discover urine-filled bottles along highways, they call for a hazmat team at a cost of about $2,500 per trip. No wonder the state is broke.
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/HazMat-teams-pick-up-urine-jars-along-roads-2569569.php

By: ocschwar

ocschwar — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 02:09:00 +0000

Escalators are a terrible kludge. Even under the best of circumstances they are prone to breakdown.

By: ocschwar

ocschwar — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 02:08:00 +0000

Part of the issue is that the bathrooms are large enough for the disabled to use, which makes them large enough for sex. Paris solved that problem. Most of the bathrooms are too small for that kind of thing, and the handicap accessible ones are ONLY accessible by the handicapped (they get issued keys).

By: SomeGuyNamedMark

SomeGuyNamedMark — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 01:44:00 +0000

Done!