Automated public toilets get off to very slow start in L.A.

JCDecaux offers three stand-alone models: the Hydra, a gray, boxy structure that resembles a plastic storage bin; the Cox, a more streamlined version with a levered awning over the entrance that makes it look more like a bus shelter; and the premium, $300,000 Pillar, the oval, green version chosen for Los Angeles that has much in common with phone booths of yore.

Still, L.A. is a little late in embracing luxury toilets.

Singapore, London and Athens have more than 500 of the APTs each -- most installed in their city centers.

In some cities, the facilities have been tailored to the needs of the toilet-going public. Those that adorn Bukit Bintang, for example, a shopping district in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, give users the choice of using a squatting bowl or a sitting pan. A deputy prime minister attended the opening of one of the public toilets there.

But even with those features, some problems have plagued the APTs. In Seattle, which pays about $700,000 a year to maintain five downtown toilets, business leaders said the facilities had become a haven for drug dealers and prostitutes.

L.A. officials say that the risks of such use are far outstripped by the public benefits of self-cleaning, self-monitoring toilets -- and that the time limit on each person's use of the toilet, usually 15 to 20 minutes, also limits such behavior.

After Kevin Scott left the APT outside San Julian Park, it whirred a little as it cleaned. Scott, who is homeless, said he prefers the APT to a bank of nearby Porta Pottis and the missions, which make their toilets available to the public.

"These are a lot cleaner" than the Porta Pottis, he said. "They're being used."

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cara.dimassa@latimes.com