A hub with no bathrooms (2024)

LAWRENCE — The McGovern Transportation Center, home to MeVa bus and MBTA commuter rail service seven days a week, is clean, bright and spacious.

It even has 10 pianos ready for plunking in waiting areas.

But try finding a restroom at the transportation hub and, well — you are out of luck.

MeVa’s administrator Noah Berger said the center — MeVa’s new hub — has opted to not open its two, single-unit bathrooms due to concerns over drug use and safety.

Nor are there plans to construct larger bathrooms, he says.

Meanwhile, riders, including the chair of the region’s transit advisory board, as well as a teenage advocate said public restrooms are a basic amenity and McGovern should have them to serve the needs of its travelers.

“I would expect as part of the phasing of a transportation hub, that there would be included — somewhere in the phasing — the installation of public bathrooms,” said Lawrence resident Myra Ortiz, vice chair of the MeVa Advisory Board.

Ortiz is a regular MeVa rider who takes the commuter rail to work in Boston. She said she will bring the restroom topic to the board in November.

McGovern’s $2.8 million makeover included installation of bus berths and walkways, and painting, and will include digital signs and murals at the 315,000-square-foot, 900-space parking garage.

Monday, mid-afternoon at McGovern, bells rang and MBTA trains thrummed on nearby tracks.

MeVa’s tropical colored buses wheeled in and out of the station. Passengers, some still getting used to the new schedules, paused along the walkways seeking help finding their boarding platform.

Randy Hyppolite of Methuen stood at his appointed platform. He rides MeVa buses daily, traveling to and from work and school in Lowell, Middlesex Community College, where he studies graphic arts.

Hyppolite said he understands the point about MeVa not wanting the bathrooms to attract drug use, but riders, especially those like himself who have to transfer buses, spend a lot of time waiting for buses.

“I go to the restaurants when I need to go to the bathroom,” he says. “It would be great if they had one (here).”

Searching for her bus, Donna Despirito, also from Methuen, said she uses MeVa buses several times a week for shopping and enjoys the hustle and bustle of people getting off trains and heading to their cars in the garage.

She didn’t know McGovern had no public restrooms.

“That’s essential,” she said. “What about people who come here with kids?”

As recently as last year, when McGovern got minimal use for bus service, the center’s two small bathrooms were open.

This was prior to Sept. 1, when McGovern became Lawrence’s bus hub, where 14 bus routes originate.

It replaced the former hub, the Buckley Center in downtown, which also had no public bathrooms, Berger said.

“In my heart of hearts, I wish we had bathrooms,” Berger said. “The bathrooms that were built at McGovern are not what you would expect.”

Lawrence has a large unhoused population and it is not unheard of for people to overdose in bathrooms or lock themselves in them for an extended period.

“We can’t operate buses and be expected to provide the services you expect from a shelter or triage (unit),” Berger says.

Berger said he thinks the discussion over public bathrooms is larger than McGovern. Other regional transit hubs have no restroom facilities, he said.

They are not required by state law for transportation centers, though larger hubs including Boston’s Back Bay, North Station and South Station as well as Worcester and Lowell, have them.

Somerville resident Amith Saligrama, 18, was moved to action at age 14 during the pandemic lockdown, in 2020, when his grandfather, from India, was staying with the family, and the two of them would go on long walks.

“He stopped going on the walks because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to find a bathroom if he needed one,” Saligrama said. “I realized others have this issue, elderly people and others.”

Saligrama began a campaign on behalf of public restrooms in the Boston area and created a website, bathroomaccess.com, to inform people where they are located.

He has identified 400 public bathrooms, not in restaurants but in public facilities — in town and city halls, libraries, and at beaches and transportation centers.

Transit hubs are logical places for restrooms, he says.

Talking about bathrooms and their use is, if not taboo, at least something we tend to avoid, but the facilities are privy to a biological process. Everyone needs a restroom, at one time or another.

You can grab a bus from McGovern to Lowell or Newburyport, or hop on a MBTA commuter rail from here to Boston’s North Station.

But you can not go to the bathroom at the McGovern Transportation Center.

At McGovern on Monday, Lara Grettel of Haverhill and her friend, Eliza Rosado, waited for their bus after shopping. They wished the center had restrooms.

Grettel said, in a hushed tone, anyone who drinks water has to use a bathroom.

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