> JCDecaux is really an ad company. The street toilets are just a way to get ads on public property.
At the risk of going off on a tangent, JCDecaux is actually a marketing company which sells ad space to the highest bidder. Their business model consists of offering municipalities free public equipment/urban infrastructure such as bus stops, public toilets, public fountains, etc, and in exchange have the right to use that to post curated ads.
> The first problem was that that the US required them to be wheelchair-accessable.
I don't think that holds any truth at all. All JCDecaux public toilets I've seen were all designed with accessibility in mind. Why do you think that asking JCDecaux to provide something it already provides everywhere would be suddenly an issue?
> So they were 3x as big and several times more expensive than the smaller units in Paris.[1]
Those are already wheelchair-accessible. What's your point?
> They are noted for working fine in tourist areas, and badly in homeless areas. Making them big enough for wheelchair accessibility makes them big enough for drug deals, too.
I don't see your point. Do you think there are no homeless people in tourist areas where JCDecaux deploys public toilets? People still vandalize those, and also coin-operated ones.
At the risk of going off on a tangent, JCDecaux is actually a marketing company which sells ad space to the highest bidder. Their business model consists of offering municipalities free public equipment/urban infrastructure such as bus stops, public toilets, public fountains, etc, and in exchange have the right to use that to post curated ads.
> The first problem was that that the US required them to be wheelchair-accessable.
I don't think that holds any truth at all. All JCDecaux public toilets I've seen were all designed with accessibility in mind. Why do you think that asking JCDecaux to provide something it already provides everywhere would be suddenly an issue?
https://www.jcdecaux.com/press-releases/world-toilet-day-ove...
> So they were 3x as big and several times more expensive than the smaller units in Paris.[1]
Those are already wheelchair-accessible. What's your point?
> They are noted for working fine in tourist areas, and badly in homeless areas. Making them big enough for wheelchair accessibility makes them big enough for drug deals, too.
I don't see your point. Do you think there are no homeless people in tourist areas where JCDecaux deploys public toilets? People still vandalize those, and also coin-operated ones.