New York City is building more public toilets and launching an online locator so you can find them

NEW YORK — Busting to go in the Big Apple? Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday a plan to build 46 new restrooms and renovate 36 existing ones located in city parks, adding to the city’s roughly 1,000 such facilities over the next five years. “Part of making New York City a more livable city is tackling the little things — the things we don’t think about until we need them,” Adams said in a statement launching the effort, which his administration has dubbed “Ur in Luck.” The lack of public restrooms has long been a problem in a city where more than half of households don’t own cars and hoards of tourists go sightseeing by foot and subway. New Yorker Teddy Siegel created a now hugely popular social media account and online map dedicated to public bathrooms in the city “after nearly having an accident in Times Square” in 2021. “Over the past three years, I’ve learned from my community that New York City’s lack of publicly accessible restrooms is not only a quality of life and public health issue, but it’s an equity crisis,” said Siegel, whose own crowdsourced got2gonyc map lists more than 2,000 places to find a facility.