Filthy bathrooms in refurbished Wilminton Delaware Station

[Celie baussan]

I take Amtrak from NY Penn Station to Wilmington Delaware. My husband and I were thrilled to seeWilmington Station refurbished and modernized. But the filthy bathrooms are often unusable due to feces and blood! Today, Tuesday July 5th I arrive at 6 am for the 2150 Acela to NY. I go in to the ladies room and literally run out into a Amtrak policeman. Across from Wilmington Amtrak station is a park that homeless people use the Amtrak Station. The policeman stated they can't even use the bathroom due to the filthy conditions and the train station does not employee a 24 hour cleaning service!

Please there is no where else to go at 6am and I don't think I'm asking too much to have Clean Bathroom Amenities at the Wilmington Delaware Amtrak Train Station! How is it possible that New York Penn Station has cleaner bathrooms?

So much money was spent on the Wilmington Train Station and yet there is no 24 hour cleaning maintenance crew? The Northeast Corridor-the most profitable commuter Amtrak Line?

Please Clean Wilmington Train Station Bathrooms regularly for your paying customers as well as the staff that work there?

Thank you

 

[MrFSS]

I take Amtrak from NY Penn Station to Wilmington Delaware. My husband and I were thrilled to seeWilmington Station refurbished and modernized. But the filthy bathrooms are often unusable due to feces and blood! Today, Tuesday July 5th I arrive at 6 am for the 2150 Acela to NY. I go in to the ladies room and literally run out into a Amtrak policeman. Across from Wilmington Amtrak station is a park that homeless people use the Amtrak Station. The policeman stated they can't even use the bathroom due to the filthy conditions and the train station does not employee a 24 hour cleaning service!

Please there is no where else to go at 6am and I don't think I'm asking too much to have Clean Bathroom Amenities at the Wilmington Delaware Amtrak Train Station! How is it possible that New York Penn Station has cleaner bathrooms?

So much money was spent on the Wilmington Train Station and yet there is no 24 hour cleaning maintenance crew? The Northeast Corridor-the most profitable commuter Amtrak Line?

Please Clean Wilmington Train Station Bathrooms regularly for your paying customers as well as the staff that work there?

Thank you

First - you are not talking to Amtrak on this forum. We aren't affiliated with Amtrak, so you need to take your complaint and suggestions directly to Amtrak.

I'm sure some others will have some comments about what you report even though we can't do anything about it.

 

[nferr]

Is the station own/run by Amtrak. Or is it the city or some transit agency?

 

[Ryan]

This just in: People do foul things in bathrooms that they don't have to clean. Film at 11.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Is the station own/run by Amtrak. Or is it the city or some transit agency?

:hi: Not sure who owns the Station but it's named after the Vice President, Joe Biden, who uses it when he rides the Train to/from WAS! I suggest you write Joe Boardmans Office a Letter, Call Customer Realtions and send Vice President Biden's Office a letter also:ccing tDelawares Senators wouldnt hurt either, the Govt. puut alot of money into this Station!

BTW-The Owner of this site, Anthony, uses this Station also IINM, perhaps he can contact some folks also and get it right! :help:

 

[Anthony]

Station renovation = capital expenditure

Ongoing cleaning of restrooms = operating expenditure

 

[Anthony]

Anthony, uses this Station also IINM, perhaps he can contact some folks also and get it right! :help:

I use the station daily and while I've seen a few paper towels on the floor here and there, I haven't seen the disgusting conditions described by the OP. Then again, downtown Wilmington is a mixed bag and it's inevitable that some elements of urban life are going to mix in the station. Generally, the area along the river is safe during the day. If you go the other direction, you have the Greyhound station and less developed areas surrounding the downtown core.

 

[jcl653]

Amtrak should consider charging for the use of its bathrooms. Something like 25 or 50 cents would be enough to keep the riff raff out, and the revenue could help fund increased cleaning. I've seen this used all over Europe and it seems to work well.

 

[Anthony]

Amtrak should consider charging for the use of its bathrooms. Something like 25 or 50 cents would be enough to keep the riff raff out, and the revenue could help fund increased cleaning. I've seen this used all over Europe and it seems to work well.

Can you imagine all of the nasty letters people would send to their Congressmen if Amtrak instituted pay toilets? They would far outnumber the letters sent for dirty (but free) bathrooms.

 

[the_traveler]

Or they could even do something like the MTZ (Martinez, CA) station does (or at least did a few years ago when I was there).

The use of the rest rooms were free, but they had locks on them. To unlock it, you had to go up to the ticket counter to get a token. Then you insert the token into the lock (like you do for a pay toilet) and you can get in. And IIRC, they are only for Amtrak passengers (or perhaps non-passsengers had to pay, I'm not sure).

 

[AmtrakBlue]

I was in the ladies room at WIL a few weeks ago. It was NOT the worse bathroom I've ever been in. Seemed to be a typical "public" bathroom to me.

Despite being named after the VP, the train station is not the Hotel Dupont. And yes, I've been in the Hotel Dupont's public bathrooms.

 

[chandj]

Traveler, I like that idea. The Pittsburgh PA station keeps restrooms locked during the night so one has to ask to have it opened.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Amtrak should consider charging for the use of its bathrooms. Something like 25 or 50 cents would be enough to keep the riff raff out, and the revenue could help fund increased cleaning. I've seen this used all over Europe and it seems to work well.

I would not like this. I would not like to have to fumble around for $$ in order to use a bathroom especially if I really have to go in a hurry. And, no, I do not throw my loose change in my pocketbook so it falls to the bottom (my purse is very organized, thank you very much. )

 

[afigg]

Is the station own/run by Amtrak. Or is it the city or some transit agency?

The Wilmington DE station and platforms are owned by Amtrak. Responsibility for the station is listed as jointly shared between Amtrak and DelDOT in the ADA Accessibility Compliance Report (which has a table showing ownership and who has responsibility for all Amtrak stations in the US). So filing a complaint with both Amtrak and DelDOT might be worthwhile. In this situation, talking to someone at the ticket counter or an Amtrak employee at the boarding/waiting area might have been more productive. If access to a bathroom is badly needed, they should be able to arrange for access to other bathrooms.

The parking facilities are owned by the City of Wilmington, so if there are problems with the parking garage, contact the city.

As for a 24 hour cleaning service, well, that costs money. The public bathrooms may have been cleaned during the evening or late afternoon the day before. WIL only gets a few trains overnight. At 6 AM, the morning cleaning crew probably had not reported to work yet. Unfortunately, it only takes 1 person to seriously mess up a bathroom, if they are ill or in bad shape or just don't care.

Controlling access to the bathroom with a token system or key is not practical in a fairly busy station. WIL had close to 697K Amtrak passengers in FY10 and I don't know how many SEPTA riders.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Is the station own/run by Amtrak. Or is it the city or some transit agency?

The parking facilities are owned by the City of Wilmington, so if there are problems with the parking garage, contact the city.

The garage across MLK Blvd is owned by Wilmington Parking Authority. The one across French street (the west side of the station) and the surface lot behind the train station are owned by Colonial Parking.

 

[bobnabq]

How about writing a letter to the editor of the local paper?

 

[stntylr]

Amtrak should consider charging for the use of its bathrooms. Something like 25 or 50 cents would be enough to keep the riff raff out, and the revenue could help fund increased cleaning. I've seen this used all over Europe and it seems to work well.

I always used the dumb American excuse and pretended I didn't know I has to pay to use the toliet in Europe.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Amtrak should consider charging for the use of its bathrooms. Something like 25 or 50 cents would be enough to keep the riff raff out, and the revenue could help fund increased cleaning. I've seen this used all over Europe and it seems to work well.

Can you imagine all of the nasty letters people would send to their Congressmen if Amtrak instituted pay toilets? They would far outnumber the letters sent for dirty (but free) bathrooms.

Wait, so now we're not going to do anything because some congressman might get a nasty letter from a homeless person about it? What's the point of providing free but disgusting restrooms anyway? I avoid the restrooms here at the station in San Antonio for the exact same reason. Nobody ever seems to clean them. You can be the very first person to enter the station right as the staff unlock the front door and immediately walk over to the restroom and still find clogged toilets and sticky floors from the night before. Does that sound like an acceptable situation to you? Maybe Amtrak could add fifty cents or whatever to each O&D ticket. Maybe the station owner(s) could reach an agreement with a bathroom attendant or two whereby they keep the place clean in exchange for the ability to solicit tips during periods of heavy use. Maybe some sort of combination or amalgamation of these and other ideas would work. Or maybe we can simply remove the public restrooms altogether. That way nobody will ever have to read another nasty letter again.

 

[had8ley]

If you wanted to see the grossest bathroom of all time you should have been in NOL after the city used it for the Parish Prison. They recently re-furbed the two batrooms but I preferred the trailer outside~ it was cleaner and smelled good and had cold A/C !

 

[John Bredin]

IMHO, money has nothing to do with it. Some of the worst public washrooms I know are in a movie theater, despite the fact that everyone (but the employees) has to pay $11+ to be there! People in a hurry to get to, or get back to, the movie seem not to care!

Bringing it back to train stations, the washroom in the main Ogilvie Station in Chicago is always filthy despite frequent cleaning. On the other hand, the washroom in the north concourse at Ogilvie is in great shape. Same building management and cleaning crew, and ostensibly the same passengers. But the main station is just head-and-shoulders busier than the concourse and keeping it clean is the task of Sisyphus. :help:

And to bring "money doesn't matter" around to train stations, some of the worst Metra station washrooms I've seen were in ritzy Lake Forest (UP, not Milwaukee) and very middle-class Naperville.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

The bathrooms at WIL probably were extra busy yesterday and last night as, I believe, Wilmington has 4th of July activities at the park next to the train station. There probably were port-a-johns there, but I'm sure many people probably went into the train station to use the facilities.

This is just a guess on my part.

And I agree with a previous post that the cleaning crew probably hadn't gotten to the bathroom by 6 AM. Perhaps they hadn't started their shift or they were cleaning the mens room or other parts of the station.

 

[RailFanLNK]

I guess I'm pretty punk rock. I can #1 and #2 anywhere! Doesn't matter if its clean or filthy. It literally takes about 30 seconds (1) and 60 seconds (2). :wacko: Broken nose from fights, baseball and other things makes a smelly place almost impossible to know that it smells!

 

[AmtrakBlue]

I guess I'm pretty punk rock. I can #1 and #2 anywhere! Doesn't matter if its clean or filthy. It literally takes about 30 seconds (1) and 60 seconds (2). :wacko: Broken nose from fights, baseball and other things makes a smelly place almost impossible to know that it smells!

I always say "any hole in the ground". Of course, I'd like a clean hole and clean area around the hole, but it doesn't have to be prestine.

 

[Anthony]

The bathrooms at WIL probably were extra busy yesterday and last night as, I believe, Wilmington has 4th of July activities at the park next to the train station. There probably were port-a-johns there, but I'm sure many people probably went into the train station to use the facilities.

This is just a guess on my part.

And I agree with a previous post that the cleaning crew probably hadn't gotten to the bathroom by 6 AM. Perhaps they hadn't started their shift or they were cleaning the mens room or other parts of the station.

I think the fireworks were cancelled this year due to budget cuts. At least I didn't see anything except a steadily dwindling crowd as the night wore on.

 

[Anthony]

Who ever said nothing should be done? I was just making the rhetorical point that often, in our society, no good deed goes unpunished.

Amtrak should consider charging for the use of its bathrooms. Something like 25 or 50 cents would be enough to keep the riff raff out, and the revenue could help fund increased cleaning. I've seen this used all over Europe and it seems to work well.

Can you imagine all of the nasty letters people would send to their Congressmen if Amtrak instituted pay toilets? They would far outnumber the letters sent for dirty (but free) bathrooms.

Wait, so now we're not going to do anything because some congressman might get a nasty letter from a homeless person about it? What's the point of providing free but disgusting restrooms anyway? I avoid the restrooms here at the station in San Antonio for the exact same reason. Nobody ever seems to clean them. You can be the very first person to enter the station right as the staff unlock the front door and immediately walk over to the restroom and still find clogged toilets and sticky floors from the night before. Does that sound like an acceptable situation to you? Maybe Amtrak could add fifty cents or whatever to each O&D ticket. Maybe the station owner(s) could reach an agreement with a bathroom attendant or two whereby they keep the place clean in exchange for the ability to solicit tips during periods of heavy use. Maybe some sort of combination or amalgamation of these and other ideas would work. Or maybe we can simply remove the public restrooms altogether. That way nobody will ever have to read another nasty letter again.