Navigating the Closest Restrooms in NYC

To tackle the problem of lack of publicly accessible restrooms, we looked into how cities accross the world have dealt with it and the solutions they have implemented.

1. Paris- 2006 onwards Paris has had over 400 public restrooms in the city, most of which are free while the others require a nominal fee. All of them are wheelchair accessible and 150 of these are open 24*7. These have, to a good extent been successful in solving the problem of public bathrooms.
2. London- in this case, one ups Paris.  London's National Rail stations have public toilets which are free to use. As part of the City of London's Community Toilet Scheme, the facilities in many shops, restaurants and bars are available to use without having to buy anything.
3. Mumbai- Apart from the 8000 public restrooms that are free to use for everyone, India has a law that permits a person to use the restroom at any restaurant or mall without a minimum purchase. The problem, however, unlike Paris and London, is the sanitary standards. The maintenance of these public restrooms is neglected, making it difficult to be used.

 Finding a public bathroom in New York City is challenging, compared to most other cities in the country. This study addresses the challenge of restroom accessibility in New York City (NYC) by analyzing the distribution of publicly available bathrooms and their proximity to urban areas. The goal is to ensure that an accessible bathroom is within a 3-15 minute walk from any location in the city. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools, we identify hot-spots and cold-spots of restroom availability and investigate the relationship between restroom accessibility.

In 1869, New York City introduced one of the earliest public bathrooms at Astor Place. This initiative responded to the needs of the rapidly growing urban population, especially immigrants, who often lacked access to toilets in their residences. These public facilities provided a vital service in an era when having a toilet at home was considered a luxury, ensuring basic sanitation for city dwellers.

The availability of public bathrooms has not increased significantly since the 1970s crisis. Despite growth in the city’s population, economy, and tourism, public bathroom conditions have changed very little.

New York City was chosen as the focus of our project as one of the most densely populated cities globally, NYC faces significant challenges regarding public restroom accessibility, impacting residents and the millions of tourists who visit annually.

• Gather data on publicly available bathrooms in NYC from sources such as the NYC Open Data portal and Dr. Wansoo Im's project.
• Collected demographic and land use data from sources like the NYC Population Data Tiger.
• GIS tools such as Point-to-Point and Service Areas analysis to identify the nearest public bathrooms from various locations in the city. We conduct Hotspot Analysis to identify areas with high demand for public bathrooms.
• By employing GIS tools such as network analysis and optimal service areas we can identify areas with high demand for restrooms and advocate locations for new facilities, thereby enhancing convenience and accessibility for individuals navigating the city.

• Heatmap Analysis: To identify areas with high demand for public bathrooms.
• Service Area Analysis: To determine bathrooms available within a certain distance/time from a location.
• Point To Point Analysis: To find the nearest restroom and shortest route.
• Map Pluto: To analyze land-use and understanding the better location for restrooms

Service Area analysis helps us evaluate accessibility and this concentric service areas show how accessibility varies with impendence. In our study, we categorized various service area facilities based on time intervals, specifically utilizing four break values: 3, 5, 10, and 15 minutes from the restroom location. We conducted this analysis using data city streets, pedestrian trails, and local neighborhood roads in Manhattan. Our findings indicate that in Manhattan the restrooms are mostly available in 3-5 min distance than others. Notably, areas in deeper red on the map suggest that restroom availability exceeds a 15-minute walking distance.

Point-to-point analysis employs the locations indicated on the map to help locate the nearest restroom. In order to showcase the efficacy of this analytical method, we choose to take three random location from different boroughs and see how this method helps find the closest restroom. This locations are selected with respect to various utilization like Corporate (Brooklyn), Near Park (Manhattan), Residential (Queens).

The Heatmap highlights areas in New York City with varying restroom densities, with darker shades indicating higher concentrations and lighter areas indicating fewer facilities. These lighter areas represent potential locations for future restroom installations, as they likely experience higher demand and insufficient accessibility. By strategically placing new restrooms in these areas, we can effectively address the imbalance in accessibility and improve convenience for residents and visitors navigating the city.

Below we have the population map of NYC. Lighter colors have higher population density while population reduces as the color gets darker.

High Density zones- Manhattan (Midtown, Upper East and West sides), Downtown Brooklyn, parts of Queens and Staten Island etc

Low Population density zones- Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, Lower Staten Island, Areas in parks and around JFK airport, Area north of Sunnyside Gardens, Southern areas of Bronx etc.

We separated the restrooms based on borough (5 groups) and ran Euclidean Distance, Zonal Statistics and Hotspot analysis on each of them individually. This gave us individual hotspot maps of each borough. We then merged all 5 of them together to get the combined restroom coldspots across all of NYC.

We did this separately as doing it together classified Manhattan and surrounding border areas as hotspots and all areas further away to be cold spots.

We combined the above 5 maps to get a combined coldspot map of NYC.

An extensive tool that tells us everything about

1. Many parks over 5000 square feet lie in underserved areas and need need to be worked on in terms of restroom accessibility
2. Internal areas of Staten Island are mostly underserved
3. A visual trend can be observed that coastal areas & areas closer to Manhattan have better restroom accessibility

1. There should be laws passed to make it mandatory for parks above a certain size (here 5000 sq ft) that lie in underserved areas and have above a certain footfall on a weekly basis, to have restrooms in them
2. Restrooms present at public places must be free and their data can be monitored to have better understanding of the areas
3. Land use of underserved areas must be studied and restrooms must be installed as per local requirements and needs

1. Live data and further insights into the data would help our case in better understanding the dynamic nature of our problem and thus suggest better solutions
2. The Network Analysis does not take waiting time at a restroom or time lost due to crowded roads/ sidewalks into consideration
3. Needs of residential areas, office areas etc are different and need to be dealt with diferently

1. More awareness and open data on accessibility of public restrooms would help educate people about the presence of restrooms and their locations
2. Some simple change in policy as discussed above can help make parks easier to access