Bathroom Automation.
I travel quite frequently and I experience many different airports and their bathrooms.
A lot of the older terminals have bathrooms that look and smell like they were designed in the 1970’s before air travel became as huge as it is today. The design of the stalls is smaller, they’re often covered in grafitti, the tiles are cracked and the grout is scummy. Basically they don’t shout “I’m clean!”
In the newer terminals the bathrooms have been updated. Often they have bigger, cleaner stalls and some functions are automated. The sinks, the soap dispensers, the paper towel dispensers, toilet seat cover dispensers and even the lights. What surprises me is the what the designers of the bathroom choose to automate.
The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport recently opened a new, and very beautiful, terminal. As the for the bathroom it is also very nice, especially compared to the old one. The old bathroom had a trough instead of the normal urinal and it looked dingy, not really some place I was comfortable putting my bare rearend. The new bathrooms have normal urinals, some automation and smaller stalls.
As for the automation, the designers chose to automate the lights, which go off after a certain period of time, the toilet flushers, and the sinks. But the paper-towel dispensers weren’t automated and neither was the soap.
In my mind automation of a bathroom serves two purposes: cleanliness and water convservation. With regards to cleanliness how many times have you lifted a toilet seat or flushed a toilet with your foot because you didn’t want to touch it? Now picture this you walk into the bathroom and go into the stall. If you choose to you can put down a toilet seat cover and you risk touching the actual toilet seat. (It may seem like I’m being overly dramatic but if you’re using a toilet seat cover, I imagine the thought of actually touching the seat bothers you.) There’s one case that automation would be nice.
After you’ve finished your business you flush the toilet, thankfully it is automatic so there’s no germ encounter there. You then move to the sink and get some soap from a non-automated dispenser. You may think that it would be nice if this were automated, and you would be correct, but I don’t think it is neccessary as you’re going to use the soap to get rid of germs. Next you go to turn on the water, again it’s automatic so no touching a germ infested facet to turn it on or off. At this point your hands are clean and wet therefore you need to dry them so you reach for a paper towel. Unfortunately the dispenser requires you to crank a handle or push a lever, this is another point of contact for germs.
My point is this - is it really all that expensive to make a bathroom fully automated? With the growing number of diseases and a rise in international travel I think it is very important to be conscious of these matters.