Public Comment

It’s always mind-boggling in America that people can’t find restrooms,” said John Caner, the CEO of Downtown Berkeley Association. Caner suggested the city work with BART to provide better restroom access around stations.

John Caner, quoted above in a local paper, is the same CEO of the Downtown Berkeley Association who insisted during the planning of the renovation of BART plaza that there be no restrooms for fear of attracting the "wrong crowd." It's all nicely documented in the DBA's meeting minutes.

The bathroom in People's Park pictured in the article was inexplicably but firmly locked during the park's most recent public concert, making it clear that the presence of restrooms is only part of the difficulty. 

Let's applaud the City of Berkeley for having a bit of public process in their expensive exploration of restroom availability. And let's hope those impacted insist that BART plaza be the, er, number one location for among the most obvious of human needs. After all, at a certain moment of the day, we're all the wrong crowd. 

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