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MTA Will Reopen Some Subway Bathrooms For First Time In January 2023 - The New York Times

Of the subway system’s 472 stations, 69 have bathrooms. In January, eight of them will reopen, now that more cleaners have been hired.

Since soon after the pandemic began, transit officials have resisted reopening subway bathrooms — among the precious few public places where people could relieve themselves in New York City.

On Monday, they reversed course and announced that the bathrooms at eight stations would reopen in January as one of the benefits of hiring 800 cleaners in the last two months.

“A common-sense thing to do is to acknowledge riders’ basic humanity,” said State Senator Jessica Ramos, a Democrat from Queens. “I have never understood why it was that we don’t have many public bathrooms in our communities, and the subway seems like an obvious place to start.”

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subway, shut down all its public restrooms at the start of the pandemic in the spring of 2020 for public health reasons.

Richard Davey, who oversees the subway for the authority, said officials had struggled to hire enough people to clean the system, but have been making progress lately. Some of the new workers will clean trains, while others will tend to stations. Pandemic restrictions have also been loosened, moving officials to revisit the closure of the restrooms.

“The circumstances for Covid have changed,” Mr. Davey said. “We feel comfortable that we can begin to reopen.”

Among the subway system’s 472 stations, 69 have bathrooms. Mr. Davey said the authority will reopen the bathrooms at the 161st Street—Yankee Stadium, 14th Street-Union Square, Jay Street—MetroTech, Flushing—Main Street and Fulton Street stations as well as three others that officials have yet to identify. The authority said it picked stations that are spaced out in Queens, the Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn and that are in good shape.

There are roughly 1,160 public bathrooms for New York City’s eight million residents, mainly in public parks, subway stations, city buildings such as libraries and public pools, according to “The Need for Public Bathrooms,” a 2019 booklet by Julie Chou, Kevin Gurley and Boyeong Hong. The Parks Department is the largest provider of public bathrooms in New York.

Even before the pandemic, open public bathrooms in the subway were hard to come by and were regarded with distaste by many New Yorkers. The facilities were often unclean and vandalized and attracted homeless people. Although the announced reopenings would make up a small fraction of the system’s total restrooms, advocates for subway passengers said it was a welcome return that could lead to more facilities being restored.

“It is a long time coming,” said Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for Riders Alliance, a grass-roots organization of transit riders. “There is a public health dimension to restrooms in the subway. It is humane.”

The authority has been resistant to opening bathrooms to the public. While addressing lawmakers in January, Janno Lieber, the authority’s chairman, said it had bigger problems to deal with at the time.

“It is not the M.T.A.’s priority, I have to be honest with you, to provide restrooms,” he said in response to a question from Ms. Ramos. “We are a transportation agency.”

Mr. Davey said the authority will determine whether to reopen the remaining bathrooms depending on if there are workers to clean them, security personnel to monitor them and the funding to get them in working condition

Weekday subway ridership has been stuck at about 60 percent of prepandemic levels, and Monday’s announcement was a small step toward restoring normalcy. Many passengers have stayed away from transit in the face of a quickly evolving coronavirus and the continued popularity of remote work. Some riders could also be wary after several high-profile violent incidents.

On Saturday, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams announced a plan to increase the presence of police officers in the transit system to address subway violence — a stubborn problem that grew worse during the pandemic.

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MTA Will Reopen Some Subway Bathrooms For First Time In January 2023 - The New York Times
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