Maybe it's a pet peeve, but I'm posting this under the health forum. Years ago I recall a rant by grumpy TV personality Andy Rooney about the paucity of public bathrooms. He ended with a plea for more clean accessible restrooms for the public.
Since this issue has come to the fore again lately (Starbucks, etc.) I thought I'd start a discussion.
For myself I've seen a great improvement in the overall accessibility of bathrooms for the wheelchair user, thanks to federal regulation. I've also witnessed Arizona's large chain of convenience stores change their store policy of "restrooms are only for employees" to opening them up to everyone, and also building new stores with spacious restrooms. And I applaud department stores like Target who have the same layout so everyone knows the restrooms are right off the main entryway and are always clean with posted contact info if there are any issues.
At the same time I know some places are struggling with security issues; namely, keeping the homeless from using the sinks as bathing facilities and the drug addicts from using them as a space to do drugs. During a recent trip to Calif. we stopped at a fast food place to get a sandwich. It's on a busy corner, and the bathrooms were locked. I expected that, but when I asked the manager said she'd have to buzz me in, and sure enough, a loud buzzer goes off which of course alerts everyone in the building that you're about to go to the bathroom. Sheesh. Earlier in the week we went out for Chinese food and that bathroom had a numbered keypad - again, had to ask for the code which they readily gave but I'm sure the clerk gets pretty tired of having to answer that question all day long. A final stop on the way home was at a McDonalds which had bathrooms with no locks and was very clean - easy peasy.
Bottom line is that it seems the public bathroom situation still varies quite a bit. Not sure what the solution is, but I can see where travelers are inclined to visit the same chain restaurants where there is at least an expectation of basic cleanliness and access to bathrooms.