Attn: Peepers

RTC Ride, the municipal bus line, has employed a novel approach to dealing with graffiti in the bathrooms at the downtown Reno terminal—eliminate privacy.

“The cost to clean and repair this damage is significant,” according to Regional Transportation Commission spokesperson David Jickling. “In response, we added additional custodial staff in the spring of 2011 and increased the frequency of security patrols of the restrooms in hopes of limiting the damage. This effort did not prove to be effective, and we chose to remove the toilet stall doors to reduce the opportunity for vandals to damage our facility in private. This proved to be successful, and we saw an immediate decline in vandalism.”

However, some vandalism continued and so now in addition to the missing doors, the stall side walls contain 4-to-5-inch gaps open to the viewing public. This has led to less vandalism and also to less use of the bathrooms, period. “I started using the Eldorado,” one bus rider told us. Another rider, listening nearby, said, “Actually, Harrah’s is closer, I think.”

At one point, RTC actually went further, lowering the side walls to about waist-high. That generated protests, and the sight-gaps were used instead.