A dozen more subway bathrooms to reopen in May after pandemic closures

You’ll be able to go in a dozen more subway stations starting in May.

Bathrooms in 12 stations are reopening May 2 after a shutdown imposed during the coronavirus pandemic, the MTA said Wednesday.

“This is an important amenity, and New Yorkers have said to all facets of government that we should be doing more,” said Richard Davey, the head of NYC Transit, which operates the MTA’s subway and bus system.

Davey spoke to reporters at the Fulton St. station in lower Manhattan, where bathrooms have been open since January.

Sixty-nine stations in the 472-station subway system have bathrooms, all of which were closed during the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Bathrooms are to reopen in the Woodlawn and Norwood-205th St. stations in the Bronx; in the Atlantic-Barclays Center, Coney Island-Stillwell Ave., Euclid Ave. and the 36th St. D/N/R stations in Brooklyn; at the 168th St. A/C, the 57th St. N/Q/R, the 72nd St. Q, and the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall stations in Manhattan, and at Queensboro Plaza and Flushing-Main St. in Queens.

With May’s scheduled reopenings, 30% of the system’s public rest rooms will be back online.

The bathrooms will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., with a one-hour closure for cleaning each day at noon.

So far in 2023, the MTA has reopened bathrooms at nine subway stations. “[Those] bathrooms have been used over 35,000 times,” Davey said. “Our customers are clearly using these facilities.”

The reopened facilities will have been refreshed with new lights, fresh paint, re-grouted tiles, motion-activated faucets and new hand dryers, Davey said.

“As we continue to hire cleaners and continue to renovate those remaining bathrooms, we’ll look to see if we can open additional ones later in the year,” he added.

There are currently no plans to build new bathroom facilities in the subway system.