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Re:Why is San Francisco covered in human feces? by gumby on Saturday August 18, 2018 @09:59PM (#17792099)
SF needs to deploy the Motocrotte. They used to drive down my street in Paris and were surprisingly effective. Perhaps we could upgrade to an automated one.

(actually what spurred me to write was the surprise that the Guardian, a UK newspaper/web site used the American spelling for faeces).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motocrotte

Re:Why is San Francisco covered in human feces? by samstave on Tuesday August 21, 2018 @12:46AM (#17807071)
Wow - I have been thinking about these devices for years. I didnt know a city has done them.

Sidewalk-Roomba is what I was picturing in my head, and their design has been a walk-ing exercise I do when walking around the city... basically I just observe the city as I walk through it and think about what it would take to make these feasible.

I was picturing stations where they would go to dock and dump and reload. You would have them assigned to a particular block radius and would monitor the conditions of each given area.

Perform cleanup and what not.

I was picturing something with a bunch of sensors on it, a clean/dirty water tank, tankless water heaters and a preassure washer with a battery pack.

The sensors could track the amount of foot traffic they see pass by them at all times - and you would know the ebb and flow of foot traffic throughout the city as well as the available walking space, timings of lights and buildup of foot traffic for a given intersection for each hour... lots of data.

Re:Why is San Francisco covered in human feces? by hw on Sunday August 19, 2018 @12:30AM (#17792610)
Speaking of Paris, it recently also rolled out sidewalk urinals [0]. Poop is a different matter though.

[0]: https://www.npr.org/2018/08/14/638512558/nope-those-arent-ma...

Re:Why is San Francisco covered in human feces? by gumby on Sunday August 19, 2018 @01:09AM (#17792715)
BTW they have had a variety of public urinals for over a century.
Re:Why is San Francisco covered in human feces? by bogomipz on Sunday August 19, 2018 @09:51AM (#17794301)
Don't these still exist? When did they do away with them?
Re:Why is San Francisco covered in human feces? by gumby on Sunday August 19, 2018 @10:53AM (#17794508)
About 15 years ago. I don't remember why. I thought they were pretty effective, though it was an unpleasant job and, TBH, not that nice to be around.