Since women usually spend longer time in toilet and need more care, Shanghai will build more women's lavatories and raise the ratio of men's and women's lavatories to 2:3 by 2010. 

The above information was revealed from the establishment ceremony of Shanghai Public Toilet Association. The urban toilet website also opened at the same time.

Related spokesman of this association remarked that when the 2010 Shanghai World Expo is held, all tourists and citizens can find a clean and environment-friendly public toilet no more than 300 meters away from wherever they are.

In the coming five years, Shanghai will increase its efforts in toilet construction and build and rebuild over 600 public toilets by financing from different channels. In this way, Shanghai's public toilet layout can be arranged in a more scientific, reasonable, practical and human-oriented way.

At present, Shanghai has 3,640 public toilets and most of them are located along both sides of roads. Every day, about 1.1 million people will use these toilets. Now the ratio of men's and women's lavatories is 1:1 in general.

Since the time women spend in toilets is usually three fold as much as that of men's, in some areas crowded with tourists, it is often seen that women queue up out of public toilets. Therefore, for the future plan of building and innovating public toilets, Shanghai will strive to elevate the ratio of men's and women's lavatories to 2:3.

It was learned that Shanghai municipal government will set up the public toilet network at a semidiameter of 300 meters in the regions within the inner beltway. That is to say, tourists and citizens can find a public toilet at a distance of 300 meters while for the areas within the outer beltway, such distance will be 800 meters. Four to six public toilets will be located in each square kilometer of urbanized regions.

At the same time, the government will further improve the environment of public toilets by adding convection windows, ventilation system, deodorization facility and deodorant. Moreover, it will strive to achieve the toilet environment without odors and unpleasant smell and half of Shanghai's public toilets can be odorless.

(Chinanews.cn November 7, 2005)