Rail Riders' Dilemma: Hold It or Use Bathroom

STAMFORD, Conn. -- Rita Scaglione is almost in her third decade of commuting on Metro-North Railroad. In that time, she has used a train car bathroom once. It was an emergency, the Stamford Advocate reports.

"All I know is, it's a horrible smell," she said last week while returning from Grand Central Terminal in New York City to her Greenwich home. She sat across from the wood-panel door with the small, silver "Lavatory" sign, a seat she tries desperately to avoid.

"It doesn't even smell like a bad bathroom, you know? It smells like some strange chemicals," she said, sounding perplexed. Around her, hints of the odor in question wafted in the air.

Other Metro-North commuters offered similar comments about train car bathrooms.

"Yeah," said 16-year-old Mary Carideo, using the signature teenage inflection suggesting the obvious. "They are dirty."

Metro-North officials say they recognize the problem and are trying to correct it -- within the realm of possibility. Their solutions include vacuum-style toilets, a new odor-killing "microbial agent," less time between repairs and possibly retrofitting old bathrooms.

"Obviously, we understand," said Dan Brucker, a spokesman for Metro-North spokesman. The riders, he said, are correct. "The toilets do have problems, which is why we are addressing it with these four major actions."

Some say improvement is showing. In Metro-North surveys, riders who used bathrooms in the past six months are more likely to rate them higher than those who haven't used them.

"My personal opinion -- and I use them quite often -- is that they are better," said James Cameron, vice chairman of the Connecticut Metro-North Shoreline East Rail Commuter Council. "They are not quite as stinky or as objectionable, let us say."

As with many things to do with trains, there is no shortage of trivia about bathrooms.

A few examples:

* The chemical odor riders complain about does not come from the toilet disinfectant. It emanates from the liquid used to wipe down surfaces in the bathroom.

* On average, the toilets can handle 10 to 12 people per hour. More than that and things start to go haywire.

* In Metro-North rider surveys, parking is about the only issue to rate as low, or lower, than bathrooms.

* A new microbial cleansing agent invented by Metro-North technicians renders waste and gases odorless -- truly odorless, Metro-North says. Amtrak is using it; Metro-North will have it in place by November.

Problems with train bathrooms are complex.

First, 242 of the 350 train cars on the New Haven Line are 30 years old, beyond their life expectancy. This summer, the state of Connecticut and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will start a $150 million rehabilitation program of these "M-2" aging cars, including bathroom upgrades, but that will take five years.

With an aging fleet, mechanical failures are more likely. If a train car must be switched, the replacement car could miss its scheduled nightly cleaning, when the bathrooms are flushed, dumped, etc. (Train cars also regularly receive "e-cleans," a higher level of cleaning.)

More people are riding Metro-North, increasing bathroom use. In particular, there has been a rise in the number of people traveling from New York City to Fairfield County. As a result, the turnaround time for trains is shorter, providing less time for staff to clean between runs.

Last week, passengers said they don't have high expectations of public bathrooms but were mystified by a few things: Why do the locks break so often? Why is there little, if any, air circulation? Why does the smelly bathroom seem to be in the train car with the broken air conditioner?

They said Metro-North is not entirely to blame.

"It's not the people who are conducting the train," said Carolyn Turner, a Port Chester, N.Y., resident traveling to Mount Vernon, N.Y., with her 5-year-old grandson Thursday night. "It's the people who are riding the train."

While they may not like them, riders said bathrooms are greatly needed. New Haven to Grand Central Terminal is a long ride, and people can't stop the train at gas stations. (One rider said pregnant women would be tortured without train car bathrooms.)

But Metro-North could install new rest rooms with whirlpools and some probably would not use them.

Scaglione, who called herself a neat freak who cleans after her cleaning lady finishes, pointed to the handle of the bathroom and wondered how many people had touched it that day, how many germs were covering it and how many items of dirty clothes had rubbed against it.

The little bathroom with interior steel surfaces is off-limits to her.

"Let's say I really had to go to the bathroom right now," she said, leaning over and enunciating each word. "I would bust before I used that bathroom."