Manchester gets its pee pods

The English city of Manchester has some good news for its drunken citizens. After six months of police officers handing out over a hundred tickets at £80 a piece, outdoor urinals will be installed [1] in Piccadilly Gardens and near a bus station so that people will not have to resort to peeing on the streets.

The "pee pods," as these four open-aired, plastic urinals are called, were given a go for a few weekends, and were found to greatly reduce the number of street tinklers. As such, Manchester will make them permanent weekend fixtures, going up Friday nights and coming down Monday mornings.

"We acknowledged there was a lack of public toilets in the city and decided to do something about it," a council spokesman said. "So far they have proved to be very popular."

Nor is Manchester the only English city experimenting with unusual urinals. "Cambridge introduced the toilets in the run-up to Christmas last year after a single-day trial proved successful. Westminster in London is even more proactive, with twelve pee pods, two fixed street urinals and two "pop-up" toilets that are camouflaged under the pavement during the day and elevated at night." PoopReport has even discussed some of these urinals, here [2] and here [3]. (Editor's note: man, do those old BM News Wires suck!)

The article in the Manchester Evening News doesn't provide any visuals, but a quick Flickr search reveals the facilities before a night of drinking...

[4]

...and after.

[5]

Aside from the vandalism, I for one am in favor of this idea. Most city centers have a horrendous lack of public restrooms, and it is very unsanitary to continue allowing people to pee on the street. I'm sure people will complain about the fact that the pee pods are out in the open. To them I say that it's better to see a man publicly peeing into a plastic container than it is to see a man publicly peeing on the ground upon which you walk. If I, a woman with conservative views, can agree with pee pods, then anyone can.