User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Colorado

Public toilets in Colorado, commonly called washrooms, are found at a rate of twenty-two per 100,000 people. User-friendly stand-alone public toilets on street corners began to be installed in Denver, in the 2000s. Boulder County was given a grant to make their public toilets compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Public toilets
washroom is one of the most commonly used words for public toilet in the United States.

A 2021 study found there were 22 public toilets per 100,000 people. Denver had 143 public toilets in 2021.

Cintas awards America’s Best Public Restroom. The ten 2020 finalists included the public toilets at Bancroft Park in Colorado Springs. They have the $300,000 self-cleaning public toilets. People can determine if they are being used because of lights outside, with green, yellow and red. The public toilets are also touch free. Every 30 uses, the toilets are also inspected for cleanliness.

History
Railway stations began building big terminals in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s. One of their features were big public toilet facilities. Train station designer Walter G. Berg said in his 1893 that public toilet facilities should be used to keep undesirable elements out.

In the 1900s and 1910s, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Toledo, Worcester, Salt Lake City, Providence, Binghamton, Hartford, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, Portland and the District of Columbia all built underground public toilets, most located in the city center in the local business district. The prestige of building underground public comfort stations was so high that some towns and cities who were unable to afford underground public toilets opted for none instead.

The Air Force Academy Chapel in Colorado had to scale back the plans for the number of public toilets in 1985 after US Congressional disapproval on its escalating costs.

Starting in the early 2000s, Portland, Oregon began a push to put user-friendly stand-alone public toilets on street corners. They were designed to be vandalism proof. Their designed proved popular, and the toilets were later installed in other cities including Denver, Cincinnati, San Antonio and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The AARP has given grants of over USD$70,000 to cities and towns including Biddeford in Maine, Delaware County in Ohio, Boulder County in Colorado and Fairfax in California to make their public toilets more accommodating to older members of their community by making them compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.