Excessive Amounts Of Poop Wreaking Havoc On San Francisco Escalators

San Francisco has a poop problem and its causing escalator’s throughout the city to fail. Workers at the city’s Civic Center Station last month found so much human excrement inside an escalator that they had to call in a hazmat team to deal with the situation.

Officials have known for some time now that the escalators are used as private bathrooms for the homeless who will take refuge at the bottom of the stairwells after the station closes or simply use them as private bathrooms.

While human excrement isn’t the only reason the escalators breakdown it is quickly becoming a bigger problem with five of nine escalators in the San Francisco downtown broken down this past week.

BART authorities point to the last of opened downtown public restrooms as a large consideration for the problem.

The problem at the moment is that police can’t cite someone if they don’t see the crime being committed and with so few police available to monitor escalators the problem will likely continue. At this time Station surveillance cameras are not usually monitored for illegal activity.

BART officials have been meeting with city authorities to discuss ways to better clean up the areas most affected by the homeless problem in the city.

According to BART spokesman Jim Allison:

“As much as we like to have an oasis from the rest of the world, we don’t look at (these issues) in isolation, we look at (them) as part of a puzzle.”

Do you think video monitoring or something else is the best solution?