NYTimes:

Is it safe?

After spending $5 million on its five automated public toilets, Seattle is shutting them down. Installed in 2004, the restrooms have become so filthy, so overrun with drug abusers and prostitutes, that although use was free of charge, even some of the city’s most destitute people refused to step inside them.

The units were put up for sale Wednesday afternoon on eBay, with a starting bid set by the city at $89,000 apiece.

Seattle officials say the project here failed because the toilets, which are to close on Aug. 1, were placed in neighborhoods that already had many drug users and transients. Then there was the matter of cost: $1 million apiece over five years, which because of a local ordinance had to be borne entirely by taxpayers instead of advertisers.

Richard McIver, a Seattle city councilman, said: “Other cities around the world seem to be able to handle toilets civilly, but we were unable to control the street population, and without the benefit of advertising, our costs were awfully high.”

Automated toilets have been common fixtures on European sidewalks for decades. But they have been less popular in American cities, where concerns including their appearance, cleanliness and tendency to attract illegal activity have slowed their installation. In Seattle, users left so much trash behind that the automated floor scrubbers had to be disabled, and prostitutes and drug users found privacy behind the toilets’ locked doors.

“I’m not going to lie: I used to smoke crack in there,” said one homeless woman, Veronyka Cordner, nodding toward the toilet behind Pike Place Market. “But I won’t even go inside that thing now. It’s disgusting.”