- For every 100,000 people, there are just eight public bathrooms in the U.S.
- Wyoming, Montana, and Hawaii offer the best overall public restroom access, according to a new analysis.
If you are a Type A travel planner, you know there is more to consider than making sure you get through your lists of restaurants to try and sights to see. And one of the most important things to plan for is where you will be able to use the bathroom when out and about. But if you are traveling in the United States, the answer may be difficult.
That’s because the U.S. faces a public bathroom shortage, according to a new study from Tena, an adult incontinence brand. In fact, for every 100,000 people, there are just eight public bathrooms. (And if you’ve ever had to wait in a long line for a restroom, you can begin to understand just how dismal that statistic really is.)
To help travelers who don’t want to factor in midday returns to their hotel for bathroom breaks, Tena ranked the best cities and states for public bathroom access, factoring bathroom cleanliness, wheelchair accessibility, overall density of public restrooms, and discoverability of the public restrooms. And there were some clear winners: Wyoming, Montana, and Hawaii offer the best overall public restroom access in the U.S.
Wyoming offers one of the largest caches of public restrooms with an average of 118 public bathrooms appearing on state-level map searches. These are mostly easy to find, spaced out, and well reviewed. Plus, the state ranks No. 1 for having the most wheelchair-accessible bathrooms in the country.
Montana similarly scored well, in part because Visit Montana offers a list of public restrooms available across the whole state, making them ultra easy for visitors and locals to find.
For its part, Hawaii has an abundance of public restrooms with the island of Oahu alone boasting more than 215 state-maintained public bathrooms. However, only 120 appear on Google Maps for the entire state, meaning finding the restrooms may require a bit more local insight.
When it comes to overall cleanliness, North Dakota’s public restrooms came in first place. Overall, 94 percent of the bathrooms analyzed in the state had a rating of four stars or higher. Alaska, Indiana, and New Mexico also scored high, each with 88 percent of bathroom reviews at four stars or above.
The study’s least impressive states were New Hampshire and Kentucky, each of which had a low number of public restrooms available (No. 11 and No. 20, respectively).
These are the top five states for public restroom:
1. Wyoming
2. Montana
3. Hawaii
4. Oregon
5. Idaho
