The most scandalous thing about New York’s subway bathrooms may be not how gross they are, but how few. By the M.T.A.’s official count, there are operative restrooms — at least one per gender — in 51 of the 472 stations. In a system with an average 5.6 million riders each weekday, that’s about one bathroom for every 53,000 riders.

The M.T.A. is working on this. The agency fixed up 12 bathrooms last year. It plans to refurbish an additional 25 this year. “Our customers and employees can all use more open, clean bathrooms,” said Shams Tarek, an M.T.A. spokesman.

To be fair, the bathrooms at the handful of new multibillion-dollar stations on Second Avenue and the West Side are practically pristine. But here’s what you may encounter in the rest of the system.

Times Square

A/C/E/N/Q/R/W/S/1/2/3/7 lines

Touch of class: A guard sits in a booth and buzzes you in to one of four single-occupancy restrooms, where you have a five-minute time limit.