Good timesOne News reporter Vicki Wilkinson-Bakers tells it like it is – the toilets at Wellington Station are bloody disgusting.

[O]ver the last couple of years conditions have varied – from utterly disgusting, truly disgusting, filthy, so smelly you don’t want to breathe, to generally grubby and unpleasant.

In my experience of the ladies’ loos, they seem almost perpetually grubby, the toilet walls are covered with schoolgirl graffiti, the rubbish bins regularly overflow and the discarded debris of urban life – ripped pantihose packets, bananas, wine bottles and lipstick packaging. And then there’s the issue of the narrow doors you have to dodge through to enter the toilet room.

The trouble, it seems, is these are really heavy duty, high-use public toilets that are set up for and maintained like much lower-use loos.

Wilkinson-Baker notes:

A while back, staff explained that the railway station is very busy. That’s true, it is, but so is Wellington Airport and their public toilets are fine. Shopping malls are busy, so are picture theatres. They manage to keep things clean and tidy. I’m assured the railway station toilets are cleaned every two or three hours. But it’s not enough. Maybe they need someone there fulltime.

It’s a really simple demand – clean toilets. Is this really too difficult for Kiwirail to manage?