Amsterdam is putting up a €4 million stake to expand its stock of public toilets, with an emphasis on making more available to women and wheelchair users who have been effectively shut out of the city’s stand-up urinals.
City officials say the first of the accessible units will be in place by the end of the year, but can’t say how many will be added to the city’s total until costs are clearer.
There have long been complaints that the city doesn’t provide enough public toilets, but the issue became even sharper in 2015, when a female student was fined for public urination. She challenged the fine in court, arguing that she had no choice but to pee in public because there were too few public toilets for women in the Amsterdam city center.
When the court ruled that the fine was justified because she could also have gone to a male urinal, it stirred protests, including mass public urination, at public toilets and elsewhere. Less than half the city’s public toilets are accessible to women or wheelchair users.
Image: Brbbi/Wikimedia Commons
