Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

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They can't. You can hire a full-time person whose sole job is to stand by the elevator and clean it every five minutes and it still won't be clean.

The state of San Francisco's transportation system, whether it's BART or MUNI, is a reflection of the city and its problems, not just of the transit system itself. I sincerely hope you noticed the homeless and mentally-ill that are everywhere in the city before you noticed the elevators they shit in.

Just like human shit clogging up and breaking down escalators (true story, I wish I jest), it is BART's problem, but BART and its employees are more or less powerless against it. When you have a veritable army of homeless and addicts inhabiting your city, there is not much you can do besides stay in that booth.

If you would like functional elevators that aren't biohazard zones, I'd suggest becoming involved locally and solving the problem at its root. I am confident you will get nowhere with clean elevators until you get somewhere with reducing the homeless and mentally-ill population.

> If you would like functional elevators that aren't biohazard zones, I'd suggest becoming involved locally and solving the problem at its root.

"If you want clean elevators, just solve homelessness!" Reminds me of "if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, first you must first invent the universe." It's cute... but if you actually want to know how to make an apple pie from scratch that answer is just obnoxious.

Your prescription for how to clean an elevator is absurd.

Why not simply install elevators with a grated floor and install a plastic tarpaulin at the bottom of the shaft. This way and urine would not stay in the elevators. It probably wouldn't do much for poop, which would still have to be removed manually, but I imagine that simply having the elevator open on top and bottom would allow enough air to circulate to eliminate the smell.

Alternatively, is there a way to detect when poop or piss touches a service and trigger an automatic lockdown of the elevator until an officer has come to inspect it and release it? Once someone has been trapped and fined once, they are more likely to avoid doing anything that triggers them getting caught in the elevator.

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