Why do people object to paying for public toilets, car parks etc.?

underbank said:

Plenty of large stores, shopping centres, car parks, etc DO provide free toilets ... Shops like Boots, M&S, Debenham, Matalan, most shopping centres, and most DIY sheds have customer toilets.

There may not be a legal requirement, but bigger shops provide them as a customer service.

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... and large supermarkets usually.

But why should M&S, Debenham etc ... pay for the inconvenience of providing a convenience (in the words of Britney Spears, Whoops I did it again) so that customers of their competitors Sports Direct and Primark, who don't, can come in and use them ? ... Additionally they are quite at liberty to withdraw their toilet facilities should they so wish ; although their customers cannot necessarily withdraw their need to use them. Hence, I think there should be a legal requirement to provide them.

There are plenty of McDonalds....... pop in for a Mcpiss with lies !!

I must admit for me, personally, I don't have on objection to paying for car parking or toilets when I feel like I'm actually getting something tangible for my money.

If I have to pay 30p or 40p or similar to use a toilet I'm happy to do so if the toilet I use is then clean, has fixtures and fitting that aren't broken and doesn't smell like a fetid swamp I have no objection to handing over my money. But if you're going to charge me to use the toilet and then provide grotty facilities that look not dissimilar to the toilet from the film Trainspotting then I'm going to be fairly hacked off!

Similarly with parking if I'm paying a few quid for a days parking then I have no objection to doing that if it's a car park that's got lighting, maybe some CCTV and is well surfaced with spaces that are actually big enough for most vehicles. But if you're going to charge me to park somewhere where there is no lighting after dark, the surface is full of potholes (or is just gravel) and the spaces are the size of a small moped again I'm not going to be very happy paying! Obviously there is an element of price versus the expectation. If you're only charging me £1 to park all day in the town centre then I'll accept you giving me terrible facilities because you're charging a £1 in a prime location so presumably don't have much money to spare. On the other hand if you're going to charge £12 per day (looking at you LNER and predecessors) then I don't think it's unreasonable to hold some expectations as to the level of facility being provided (even if the location is prime)!

ashkeba said:

Or someone said about not having to plan ahead with a car. I have to book mine in for testing and engineering work and buy loads of stuff for it.

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It sounds like you need a better car, or just some preventative maintenance.

ashkeba said:

Buses in some places have Duo too. These tickets should be national. So should groupsave and discount cards. It would help some people stop using pollutey cars so much.

Another good change to start by funding from a parking tax.

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I agree that Groupsave would be a good product to roll out nationally.

yorksrob said:

I agree that Groupsave would be a good product to roll out nationally.

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I agree - for any size group (3+ adult fares minimum) travelling together, with a third off child fares added too. (On reflection the F&F discount is probably too good without the up front payment too).

Having done that, get rid of all other group discounts other than Railcards.

90019 said:

It sounds like you need a better car, or just some preventative maintenance.

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Much of my car's engineering is preventative maintenance! And unlike railways, I can rarely plan route diagrams for it to happen as a matter of course during normal usage. It is always almost a special path there and back with a driver having to travel onwards and back by other means if they want to do other work. The engineering sites understandably (more noise and pollution and lots of vehicle movements including car transport trucks) often are not conveniently located for anything much else except more engineering works of different types.

I would love to buy better cars in this aspect. My current one I think is relatively good (maybe two maintenance visits a year plus the certification test) but still takes too much. Reviews rarely say much on things like this which would be a big factor for lower-mileage users, probably partly because there is a tendency to review shiny new cars where you do not yet know the engineering load. So I buy cars based on reviews of things like fuel efficiency and taxation with some input from early-adopter internet comments which may flag up any horrible features like difficult light bulb changes or strange tyre requirements. I do not think this is unusual. Is it? Am I doing cars wrong?

Or is it as I fear and most UK residents have a huge blind spot about the obscene amounts of time and money that seem to get spent on their cars? The UK car industry has a £82 billion annual turnover - I think that doesn't include any infrastructure and it's still ten times the rail industry turnover which does. Rail reportedly delivers much more benefit per pound spent too, so it seems clear we should tax car things more to help shift more to rail.

Part of the problem is the balance of cost between vehicle ownership and vehicle use. Most people need a vehicle for a basic quality of life, or at least think they do. The purchase price, servicing, vehicle tax and insurance are largely fixed costs that are needed to drive the first mile. So people see the cost of a car journey as no more than fuel and (on-topic alert!) parking.

There is some scope to encourage people to give up car ownership through car clubs etc, but I believe there would be more benefit in encouraging people who have cars to use them less. This would involve things like encouraging insurance that is more dependent on mileage, and of course providing better and cheaper public transport. Electric cars make this worse, as they are more expensive to buy but cheaper to run and it's not easily possible to tax electricity for cars without also taxing it for domestic use (and although they have fewer downsides than fossil cars they still have downsides). So sooner or later governments will have to face up to introducing mileage-based taxation.

No objection to paying for carparks whatsoever.

But I do object to paying for toilets in train stations. This is a biological need that everybody need a place to carry out.

Rail travel isnt cheap, I really think the faclities should be provided free of charge. Think about other places you visit that have toilets that still need to be maintained and cleaned.

Service stations
Cinemas
Restaurants
Shopping centres
Swimming pools
Theme parks

These are all places that people visit and will need at some point a place to use the toilet. As far as I know these are free of charge. Why should train stations charge?

With regard to public toilets, I dont object to a payment. Reason being the toilet is not ancillary to another income generating business and needs to be self funding.

Another thought on this. I don't mind paying, but I do mind inconvenience (almost nothing I do now requires carrying cash). Why can't I pay contactless for toilet use?

To have to pay for a public convenience isn’t very convenient when you have no change and a weak bladder. I travel a lot in Europe and most toilets have to be paid for, so you do get used to carrying some change about, I was however caught out in Poland recently when my Zloties wouldnt open the styles, out of desperation I tugged on the styles and the lot came away in my hands as about 3 more people ran in behind me. I notice a lot however just urinate anywhere and I`ve seen many a train driver in Eastern Europe just climb down from the cab in a station and urinate on the wheels. I`ve always though its better to pay a litle extra in tax for free toilets than risk people urinating anywhere.

Public toilets should be free in my eyes - if they really must charge then I would have much higher expectations, normally not met.

Parking. You have to charge for it otherwise, say, shoppers would never get a space as commuters have taken them all! I'm fairly astute and probably spend about £10 a year on parking.

433N said:

... and large supermarkets usually.

But why should M&S, Debenham etc ... pay for the inconvenience of providing a convenience (in the words of Britney Spears, Whoops I did it again) so that customers of their competitors Sports Direct and Primark, who don't, can come in and use them ? ... Additionally they are quite at liberty to withdraw their toilet facilities should they so wish ; although their customers cannot necessarily withdraw their need to use them. Hence, I think there should be a legal requirement to provide them.

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If we start with the premise that certain retailers wish to provide lavatories for their own customers, the marginal cost of additional consumables to cover those non customers using them is surely outweighed by the chance that someone visiting for the loo will choose to buy something anyway?

edwin_m said:

Part of the problem is the balance of cost between vehicle ownership and vehicle use. Most people need a vehicle for a basic quality of life, or at least think they do. The purchase price, servicing, vehicle tax and insurance are largely fixed costs that are needed to drive the first mile. So people see the cost of a car journey as no more than fuel and (on-topic alert!) parking.

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Insurance will cost more the higher your mileage is; and servicing will need doing more often - tho if we say an oil change costs £20, doing another one in a year to get an extra 6,000 miles becomes a marginal cost.

Bletchleyite said:

Another thought on this. I don't mind paying, but I do mind inconvenience (almost nothing I do now requires carrying cash). Why can't I pay contactless for toilet use?

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It won't be long, I'm sure. Small contactless readers for e.g. vending machines are growing in popularity.

Bletchleyite said:

Another thought on this. I don't mind paying, but I do mind inconvenience (almost nothing I do now requires carrying cash). Why can't I pay contactless for toilet use?

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I recently paid for the toilet in Haarlem McDonald's by contactless. Bizarrely, though, the cost in cash was 50 cents but if you paid by contactless you paid 1 euro and got 50 cents back in change.

ashkeba said:

.....most UK residents have a huge blind spot about the obscene amounts of time and money that seem to get spent on their cars.....

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True, but then

edwin_m said:

Part of the problem is the balance of cost between vehicle ownership and vehicle use. Most people need a vehicle for a basic quality of life, or at least think they do.

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is precisely the major and more or less unsolveable part of the picture. Most of us do (believe we) need a car available so that we can do the things simply not catered for by existing public transport. Hence, as I've said before, we can arguably discount the capital and tax costs and the age related depreciation, annual test, and (in most cases) time based servicing as necessary fixed costs, already accounted for. Thus, we need only concern ourselves with direct costs where we do have a genuine choice. And there, there is absolutely no competition on price, quality or convenience. Price, especially when more than one travel. It's compounded by a disconnect between fuelling costs and fuelling use. (Referring to my previous car) I make once or twice a month visits to a filling station and spend ~£50. That event occurs at a different time and place to the 400 miles that fuel will take me (and up to four others); So, those journeys cost nothing at the point of use. Yes, I know it's not valid, but it is part of the psychology. If it were not, you'd never see someone sitting in their car, parked and going nowhere, playing with their phone (etc), with the engine running.

Going back to price, some further points:
- if I change my mind about the destination after setting out (for any reason) - compare the additional costs incurred with conventional public transport fares vs. driving. Compare the costs if (for any reason) the trip is cut short with an early return home. etc.
- if the outbound and inbound journeys are on different days, driving costs no more than if they were on the same day.
- if the journey is made at short notice, driving costs the same as if it were planned well in advance
- if a planned journey needs to be delayed (either or both ways) due to something unforseen; if it's more than a month
This list goes on and on.

As to price and convenience
My local train service is 1x per hour and is 25 minutes' walk away. In (up to) 1hr 25 minutes, I could have got a long way to a given destination. Mrs. visits her mother, 85 miles away for the weekend from time to time. It can be done by train and bus. Trip time out 4h 10; back 3h 30. £40.50 total.
It is done by car. Car already paid/accounted for. Fuel (in our case) £10, but we could do it for less; that fee pays also for a locked garage which we don't need. A less economical car might cost £20. Wear & tear including tyres - generously another £20, but probably less. Trip time 1h 30 - 1h 45 each way. No contest.
That's for ONE person travelling alone - the worst case scenario.

Tom B said:

Insurance will cost more the higher your mileage is; and servicing will need doing more often - tho if we say an oil change costs £20, doing another one in a year to get an extra 6,000 miles becomes a marginal cost.

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That's why I included the word "largely". Mileage has some effect on insurance but is in no way proportional. Nor would it be since risks such as theft are not mileage dependent, but perhaps some policy changes could make it more so. I haven't studied in detail but I get the impression cars are more tolerant of high mileage than a few decades ago - witness for example how car hire is pretty much universally time-based with unlimited mileage. Servicing tends to be purely time-based for all but high-mileage drivers, although costs such as new tyres are distance-based.

Harpers Tate said:

My local train service is 1x per hour and is 25 minutes' walk away. In (up to) 1hr 25 minutes, I could have got a long way to a given destination.

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You could, but as you presumably aren't going to time your walk to the station to arrive a minute after the train was due this isn't an entirely reasonable comparison.

Tom B said:

If we start with the premise that certain retailers wish to provide lavatories for their own customers, the marginal cost of additional consumables to cover those non customers using them is surely outweighed by the chance that someone visiting for the loo will choose to buy something anyway?

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Exactly. Footfall is one of the most valuable things to retailers, so they should be looking at toilet provision as a way to get people into their stores.

Bletchleyite said:

Why can't I pay contactless for toilet use?

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I noticed last weekend that you can do now in the toilets in St James's Park (and presumably the toilets in the other royal parks in London. Although the gate was open, so I just walked through - I don't think there are penalty fares for toilets yet.

You would think with an ageing population that Councils would be considering more public conveniences, not closing down the existing ones.

We were in Fort William on Wednesday, and annoyed to find that the town centre loos that were free last time I visited in 2017 now charge 50p. We decided to wait until we got to Wetherspoons (we were going there anyway), but a chap coming out of the loos said you can now pay by card apparently. I bet the banks love all the tiny entries of 50p that are now on people's statements!

I read an article a while ago about the decline of town centres, and what could be done to improve things, specifically to encourage the elderly to shop in them. They came up with all sorts of ideas such as libraries and walk-in medical centres, but completely overlooked what I would have instantly suggested - public toilets and places to sit down for a rest. I would happily spend a day out somewhere that offered both of those, but it's becoming increasingly rare.

Thank goodness for Wetherspoons, even if you usually do have to climb about 40 stairs to use the loos!

sprunt said:

You could, but as you presumably aren't going to time your walk to the station to arrive a minute after the train was due this isn't an entirely reasonable comparison....

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No, but if I want to leave "now" then it makes no difference where I wait for the train - home or station, or en route - does it? I could still have driven 40 or 50 miles.......

Harpers Tate said:

No, but if I want to leave "now" then it makes no difference where I wait for the train - home or station, or en route - does it? I could still have driven 40 or 50 miles.......

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I know some trips are urgent. But for the vast majority of trips that you don't already have to plan for, will you really not be able to wait an average of half an hour?

I realise that, at the moment, public transport is not a viable option for many people, I agree. Vastly more money needs to be put into it. For your examples of journeys it makes sense to travel by car, because the train takes almost twice as long and costs far more.

But I disagree that people should be allowed to dismiss public transport because they wanted to leave two minutes after the train, or indeed because they have traveled by car all their life and now feel it is there right to do so, even to the detriment of others.

This thread now seems to have turned into an argument about car usage. This is not what I intended it to become. Maybe we should get back to the actual subject of the thread.

Apologies if this isn't in-line with the current topic of conversation, but:
If I needed to use the toilet, and found I needed to pay to get in, I would try and find another toilet somewhere else. If my train is due in a few minutes at a station, I'll use the onboard toilet.
Paying for a day's car parking at a station or in a town centre is alright - I don't own the land and therefore I should pay a sort of rent to park there.
I live in an area where we don't have to pay for car parking, and it is always confusing to me that people have to pay even to just pop into the newsagents for 5mins in some places!

If the toilets which required you to pay were well-maintained, I would be more inclined to pay to use them. But if I find out that they are horrible, I will know not to use them again!

-Peter

trainophile said:

You would think with an ageing population that Councils would be considering more public conveniences, not closing down the existing ones.

We were in Fort William on Wednesday, and annoyed to find that the town centre loos that were free last time I visited in 2017 now charge 50p. We decided to wait until we got to Wetherspoons (we were going there anyway), but a chap coming out of the loos said you can now pay by card apparently. I bet the banks love all the tiny entries of 50p that are now on people's statements!

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The banks won't care, micropayments were one of the main points of contactless.

I could live with paying for public toilets if you could pay contactless.

With stations it's rather different and I'd expect the cost of the lavvy to be included in my ticket price....and we do finally seem to be heading down that (rail)road...

I`m surprised the railways don't charge for a seat reservation as well

Tom B said:

the marginal cost of additional consumables to cover those non customers using them is surely outweighed by the chance that someone visiting for the loo will choose to buy something anyway?

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Yup. It's why department stores always have the loos in the top far corner. Even if you don't buy owt, you've had to walk through all their wares so you've been tempted.

I just thought I'd add that it's not just the hassle factor of paying. I remember people complaining when the hourly town-centre parking rate in my area went from 60p to 70p!

I’d rather have a free P**s pass than a free Bus pass. I would certainly use it a lot more .

trainophile said:

I bet the banks love all the tiny entries of 50p that are now on people's statements!

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Bletchleyite said:

The banks won't care, micropayments were one of the main points of contactless.

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The banks do care : they love them because they get commission that they would have missed with cash. Their commission might be even tinier but it's multiplied by billions. Why do you think they are pushing to ban cash, use contactless and go paperless?

Remember the case of the bank computer programmer who rounded off all the fractions of a penny of people's savings interest and diverted them into his own account. He was quickly found out because his account suddenly balooned into £millions.

Lucan said:

Remember the case of the bank computer programmer who rounded off all the fractions of a penny of people's savings interest and diverted them into his own account. He was quickly found out because his account suddenly balooned into £millions.

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Have you just been watching Superman III?

Lucan said:

Remember the case of the bank computer programmer who rounded off all the fractions of a penny of people's savings interest and diverted them into his own account. He was quickly found out because his account suddenly balooned into £millions.

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There have also been cases with HMRC regarding calculation of VAT. Eg if you calculate VAT on a "per item" basis and round it, the total VAT can be different than where you account for VAT on the total, thus making the business a lot of money if they're dealing with huge numbers of small sales. Pretty sure one of the cases was a fast food restaurant chain who were "pocketing" a couple of pence on every sale - irrelevant on an individual basis, but when you make millions of sales per day, it very soon adds up!!

Before I joined the railway I worked at Luton airport. Any user of this airport probably knows about the parking charges and they are a bit high . However talking specifically about the drop off area which used to be free , but by the time I left was 3 pounds to use for first ten minutes, then a pound a minute. Sounds quite a rip off and I'm sure the airport love the money. Thing is , you could park in mid term for 15 minutes for free or long term for 2 hour's free and your friends, relative's or customer could get the shuttle bus right outside the terminal. That high drop off charge wasn't originally to make money , but to drive traffic away from the terminal area and into the outer car parks , where you could drop off for free. It was also brought in because when the drop off zone was free , people abused it and parked there and went off for coffee and wave off said relative's, friends etc. That then helped free it up for other users. Sometimes we don't know the real reason for a charge and far too many people take the Mick and ruin it for others. Just saying.