Urinals in train toilets - an idea ?

[Trainbike46]

installing waterless urinals would be a way to reduce how quickly the train runs out of water / how quickly the retention tanks fill up. But ideally you would just fit each toilet with everything it has now, and then a urinal as well, so that urinal use (and therefore water savings) would be maximised, without reducing toilet availability for anyone.

NS in the Netherlands trialled them by installing them on the VIRMm, the logic being that it would keep the mess caused by some men away from the regular toilet, so it would stay cleaner for everyone who had to or wanted to sit down. (I think only on the VIRMm-1?), but apparently a problem was found with people mistaking the urinal for a sink (do not ask me how someone could do that, or how NS found out about it, I don't know and I don't think I want to know), So they decided not to expand it to other traintypes

Indeed. Instead of storing waste in tanks, we could just discharge it at the earliest opportunity, as we used to.

OK, toilets flushing onto tracks aren't going to come back, but a system that doesn't rely on depots and pipes and staff and stabling shouldn't be out of the realms of possibility, if this is a real problem.

When I used to use Southern a lot I did see a lot of toilets automatically out of order. Now I mainly use TFW and it's very rare to see. TFW's routes are a lot longer and the depots a lot more dispersed, so could this be an incompetence problem rather than a technical / engineering issue?

Possibly TfW fitted larger retention tanks?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 30 Apr 2022 ==

If possible, fitting larger retention tanks or bioreactors would be the most obvious solution, but that might not fit under some types of rolling stock

 

[Magdalia]

My experience is the exact opposite, the only gender neutral toilets I've ever used (mainly in office buildings or smaller restaurants) have included a seperate washbasin in each cubicle, though no good reason why they can't be designed like the one's you've seen.

Interesting. Most that l've used are in government buildings.

Government buildings are mostly a safe place for shared facilities. From what we've learned this week, the Palace of Westminster is an exception.

God, (you said it) do I really have to spell this out? That was not my point.

Magdalia wanted to raise off-topic LBGT issues. But a LBGT person's needs in regard to toilet fittings are no different from those of whichever gender they are inclined towards, or even if neither. So how are LBGT people being discriminated against any more than the rest of the population?

I'm well aware that women are sometimes caught short by other women occupying WC cubicles for longer times. Mrs L tells me all about that. I entirely agree that in general women should be provided with more cubicles than men have urinals. But I understood the OP was suggesting a urinal in the same compartment as the WC so that not so much water was consumed in flushing. The arrangement would remain a unisex one, keeping you and Magdalia happy, I trust.

If anyone wanted an arrangement with a cubicle purely for a gents' urinal (a urinal being the point of this thread), then you would need a separate cubicle for a gent's WC, and also at least one and maybe several (to avoid ladies queuing and to try to keep Magdelia and yourself happy) cubicles for ladies. That would take up half a carriage and would be ridiculous, like I said.

LGBT issues are not off topic here. Gender neutral toilets are not about the plumbing, they are about safe spaces. On train toilet provision provides safe spaces for transgender and non-binary people, and I don't want that changed, I want it extended to other public spaces.

 

[yorksrob]

installing waterless urinals would be a way to reduce how quickly the train runs out of water / how quickly the retention tanks fill up. But ideally you would just fit each toilet with everything it has now, and then a urinal as well, so that urinal use (and therefore water savings) would be maximised, without reducing toilet availability for anyone.

NS in the Netherlands trialled them by installing them on the VIRMm, the logic being that it would keep the mess caused by some men away from the regular toilet, so it would stay cleaner for everyone who had to or wanted to sit down. (I think only the VIRMm-1?), but apparently a problem was found with people mistaking the urinal for a sink (do not ask me how someone could do that, or how NS found out about it, I don't know and I don't think I want to know), So they decided not to expand it to other traintypes

Now there's a problem I didn't forsee !

LGBT issues are not off topic here. Gender neutral toilets are not about the plumbing, they are about safe spaces. On train toilet provision provides safe spaces for transgender and non-binary people, and I don't want that changed, I want it extended to other public spaces.

I suppose that for once trains are ahead of the curve here, given that lavatory facilities are always contained within an enclosed compartment.

 

[randyrippley]

A lot of good engineers worked very hard on overcoming the deficiencies of the basic design, but there's nothing really technically outstanding about an aircraft weighing ten tons more than the competition, with generally inferior performance. There's a reason nobody designs airliners with rear engines and T-tails these days (other than a few small biz-jet derived regional types).

At the time the high set rear engines were essential to prevent foreign object ingestion on the rough East African airfields they were intended to fly from. As for performance, except for Concorde they were the fasted transport aircraft flying, and held the record for fastest subsonic crossing of the Atlantic for over 40 years.

 

[Basil Jet]

For them (or whatever pronoun they choose) maybe, but not for females who would rather use a facility that they can be guaranteed no men will use.

That's just making a fuss for the sake of attention, though. I've never heard of a woman refusing to use trains or planes because everyone shares the toilets. It seems that if a toilet is marked as unisex, all women are fine with everyone using it. But as soon as you put a picture of a woman on the door, the presence of trans-women in the toilet plunges these women into an agony that they must tell everyone about.

 

[Magdalia]

But as soon as you put a picture of a woman on the door, the presence of trans-women in the toilet plunges these women into an agony that they must tell everyone about.

To be fair, it is only a tiny minority of women who react this way. Unfortunately they are mostly in academia and the media so have a platform for their views, but they are not representative of most women.