Kansas City needs more public restrooms — and it’s more than a matter of convenience
Moving through the streets of Kansas City as a pedestrian can be a frightening experience. Whether walking or moving with an assistive device such as a wheelchair or cane, you often must navigate an obstacle course of crumbling or nonexistent sidewalks, pedestrian signals that take too long to come and disappear far too quickly, and next to no space to sit in shade and solitude when you need it.
All of this before we even begin to talk about whether you need to use a restroom.
Access to safe and clean public restrooms aligns closely with the pedestrian experience, because in many cases it dictates whether folks will even be able to walk to their destination in the first place. More broadly, it informs how we plan public space and for whom. Understanding public restroom access from this perspective can also help us to see the issue as one of gender and racial equity, public health, sustainability and more.
The issue of public restroom access is also tied directly to how we create and preserve a space of dignity for our homeless population. Finding permanent housing solutions must remain a central focus, but in the absence of shelter, it’s imperative that our city provides a place for unhoused individuals to engage in life-sustaining behaviors such as walking, sleeping and using a restroom.
Now is an optimal time for Kansas City to investigate the issue further. The City Planning and Development Department is working in earnest to update Kansas City’s comprehensive plan, which will inform development efforts related to walking for decades to come. The city is also working to develop an action plan to implement the Vision Zero resolution, which seeks to address the systemic issues of traffic violence on our streets. And with the passage of legislation to decriminalize jaywalking and other low-level offenses related to walking and biking, people are rightfully asking what we should do next to increase the perception and reality of a safe and comfortable pedestrian experience.
Expanding public restroom access may seem daunting, but we have examples from elsewhere that can guide our efforts. There are model initiatives in Austin, Denver, Portland, Oregon.
Minneapolis, in particular, offers a potential blueprint for how Kansas City could begin to take steps. Following the release of an assessment in 2019, the city’s downtown improvement district launched the 100 Restrooms Project. The city has already established 28 publicly accessible restrooms, and has deployed three more temporary installations as well. It seems reasonable to assume we could do something similar in the City of Fountains.
If and when we embark on this journey, it’s imperative that this work centers on creating inclusive restrooms. That means, among other things, making them gender neutral, providing feminine hygiene products free of charge, installing changing tables for parents with small children, and moving beyond the simple requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act to put an emphasis on universal design.
But beyond the design and construction of these facilities, more work would need to be done. We would need better way-finding and maps to help guide folks to the restrooms. More staff and resources would be needed to maintain them. But there’s also an opportunity for greater public education on the issue as well.
At the end of the day, we all need to go. How we choose to address this reality has broad implications for many of the other issues we’re dealing with right now. Expanding public restroom access may not be a walk in the park, but it’s a worthy endeavor to help make walking in Kansas City a little easier.
Michael Kelley is the policy director for BikeWalkKC, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit working to make the Kansas City region a better place for active transportation. Learn more at bikewalkkc.org.
This story was originally published September 3, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Kansas City needs more public restrooms — and it’s more than a matter of convenience."