At the Burien Transit Center, for a couple of years now, there’s been a construction-style portable toilet. It’s a big plastic box with a door you can close and latch, and a seat that looms over a lake of shit and piss, which is emptied once weekly.
As a bus-rider on the south and west side, I’m often in Burien, and that honey bucket was always icky and sticky and stank, but I used it dozens of times, and appreciated it. I even like to think that I’m part of the reason it was installed, only a few weeks after I shat on the concourse at the Transit Center, and wrote a letter to Metro Transit about it.
But a couple of weeks ago, the icky, sticky, stinking restroom was removed, and replaced by a high-tech and allegedly self-cleaning toilet, with electricity and flush-plumbing and a sink!
You’re thinking this is better than a toilet that’s just a pit for pooping and peeing in, but actually, it’s worse.
To access the new facility, you scan a QR-code with your phone’s camera, or send a text to Throne Labs Inc, the company that’s been contracted to install, clean, and maintain the restroom. And indeed that’s simple, if you have a smart phone, but if you don’t, there’s no longer a restroom you can use at the Burien Transit Center.
Goes without saying, life in the big city and all, people who ride the bus aren’t rich, often aren’t even lower-middle class, and might not have smart phones. And a lot of people who used the honey bucket were homeless, and definitely don’t carry smart phones.
Poor people and homeless people are people. That’s a bold statement, I know, and so’s this: People need to poop and pee, even poor people, even homeless people. If they can’t poop and pee in a public toilet, they’re going to poop and pee in the bushes, on the sidewalk, or someplace else you’d rather not find poop and pee.
So I’m skeptical of this new toilet, on principle.
But one fine afternoon, when the toilet had been there for a week or so, your reporter needed a restroom. I approached this new monument to feces and urine, to solve the riddle of its entrance and use.
“Available,” said a large electronic readout on the door. I read the instructions, but I have never used a QR-code and hate my phone’s camera, so I texted the number on the sign, thinking that would open the door. Nope. Throne Labs Inc replied with a six-digit number, which I was supposed to input somewhere, which would, they promised, open the door.
It all began creeping me out. Where’s the privacy notice, explaining what Throne Labs Inc does with its database of pee-ers and poopers’ phone numbers? Instead of inputting the access code they’d sent, I replied, “What do you do with this information?”
Got no error message in response, but also got no response. Presumably, users’ phone numbers are sold for marketing purposes, yielding more profits for Big Toilet, and spam from adult diaper manufacturers for me.
So I walked across the asphalt and peed in the bushes, not far from where the honey bucket used to be.
On further stops at the Burien Transit Center, a few further problems have become apparent.
The old john, the open pit in a man-sized plastic box, had been across from the waiting area, sorta secluded. This new toilet is on the platform, right where riders wait for the RapidRide #F. You’re literally peeing and pooping in the heart of a busy bus depot. You might as well announce to the crowd, “I’ll be taking a dump now.” And there’s always a crowd.
Also, this new restroom is tall, and blocks view of the readerboard that lists arrivals and departures. To see that info, you now need to walk about ten extra steps.
Also, it’s supposed to be a self-cleaning toilet, but a truck and workers from Throne Labs Inc are present about a third of the times I’m at the bus station.
I don’t know shit about the business model for Throne Labs Inc, and there are no ads yet, but I’ll wager big bucks that the new restroom will soon be festooned with advertising all over its outside and inside.
And then, one weird day when I didn’t need a toilet, I was sitting on a bench at the bus station, waiting for my ride home, when — whoosh — the restroom door slid open. Nobody was there. Nobody walked in. Nobody walked out. Nobody had asked for the door to be opened.
Curious, I walked up the ramp and looked into the restroom, then stepped inside. The door whooshed closed behind me, like the doors on Star Trek.
It’s a basic restroom, toilet on one side, sink on the other, but there’s no lock — nothing to twist or latch, to make sure nobody else comes in. Ten minutes after you enter, or sooner if you’ve flushed and a sensor detects that you’re walking toward the door, it opens.
So you’re trusting Throne Labs Inc with your phone number, and trusting them to lock the door, and to keep the door locked while you’re doing what you came to do, and trusting them to unlock and open the door when you’ve wiped and flushed.
This is the same company that opened the door a few minutes earlier, when nobody had requested the door be opened.
Like I said, I didn’t need a toilet that day, but any time nature calls at the Burien Transit Center, you’ll find me back in the bushes, near where the honey bucket used to be.
7/13/2026
itsdougholland.com
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