But whenever you open the door to sure stalls, you is likely to be confronted by a perplexing sight: not one bathroom, however two, positioned immediately reverse each other as if to ask a joint session.
In a viral tweet that made the rounds final week, a baffled MIA traveler confessed that she engaged in a “deep inner debate about which one to make use of.”
That was sufficient to spur New Times to (pardon the expression) resolve it.
(Yes, we pestered the tweeter. We additionally nodded sagely to ourselves when she stated she had no additional perception to supply.)
What’s up with the dueling commodes?
We shared the tweet with Miami International Airport spokesperson, Greg Chin, who volunteered that the airport has three bogs with that configuration.
“Each of these bogs has a door with a lock to allow them to solely be utilized by one particular person or one set of individuals at a time,” Chin supplied.
Eric Solares, a advertising supervisor at Dade Construction Corp., which focuses on large-scale business tasks, says the lavatory was seemingly designed for accessibility. This configuration, he suggests, might permit individuals who use wheelchairs to decide on whichever facet makes it simpler for them.
“It is part of a handicapped restroom by which individuals in wheelchairs normally have a facet that they like to switch to primarily based upon which facet of their physique is stronger,” Solares imparts.
That led us to name on Matthew Dietz, scientific director of the Disability Advocacy and Inclusion Law Clinic at Nova Southeastern University’s Shepard Broad College of Law, who asserts that the design has “good intentions” however was “not utterly well-thought-out.”
Dietz says the two-toilet setup does not essentially make the lavatory extra accommodating than fashionable accessibility stalls or household restrooms. He notes {that a} wheelchair person may not be capable of transfer from wheelchair to rest room and bathroom to wheelchair from the identical facet. In such cases, each bathrooms are too shut to at least one wall to accommodate a wheelchair on that facet.
“You do not have to have two bathrooms,” Dietz says. “Unless you are attempting to show your child tips on how to be potty-trained,” he provides. “It might assist for that.”
That led us again to Chin, who defined that the dual-toilet stalls have been constructed “earlier than 1970” and use an outdated design.
He says the Miami-Dade Aviation Department is planning a renovation of all 447 restrooms within the airport, and that the renovations will embrace eradicating the second bathroom in these stalls to evolve with present requirements.
Chin says he does not have information that go far again sufficient in time to confirm that the bogs have been certainly designed for incapacity entry.
Numerous calls and emails from New Times to Jessica Marin Urrea, the airport’s incapacity program coordinator, yielded the suggestion that we direct our inquiries to Chin.
If the mysterious potties have been certainly designed for accessibility, they’re one of many airport’s many distinctive options to accommodate vacationers with disabilities.
MIA boasts charging stations for wheelchairs in six concourses and pre-security areas, free help for visually impaired vacationers by means of the Aira cellphone app, and calming rooms for people with autism or different situations that may make them delicate to the commotion and sensory overload from airport journey.