Comments on: ‘Can you hear me now?’ Straphangers wonder about MTA pay phones

By: Second Ave. Sagas | A New York City Subway Blog » Blog Archive » With #3333 nearly finished, service advisories in digital form are best bets

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:33:15 +0000

[...] can reach a pre-recorded message detailing all MTA service advisories by dialing #3333 from any (working) subway platform pay phone. Of course, with cell phone use prevalent and pay phones on the way, [...]

By: john perales

john perales — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 01:19:49 +0000

We need phones withouy handles to break, just to speak into. after all cell phones is not private anymore. Why should payphones be any different. This way,you only your index finger.

By: Murder at the Canal Street station « Second Ave. Sagas

Murder at the Canal Street station « Second Ave. Sagas — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 04:48:35 +0000

[...] City subways. Wait a minute, you might be thinking, do those payphones actually work? Well, about a quarter of them don’t work. So part of the game is finding a working payphone at Canal Street. (The other [...]

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 14:10:11 +0000

Payphones were once ubiquitous, and universally utilized. At a Nickel, Dime or Quarter they were profitable. Now people (at least people younger than 30) regard them merely as disease vectors if they notice them at all.
Of C O U R S E many of them don’t function. What do you think a payphone costs to design, build and install? The cost is likely in the low 4 figures. What do you figure it costs to send a union-scale employee around to repair one every time some dimwit decides to test his strength by yanking the handset out? All that for a handful of Quarters every week or so? It certainly costs far more to regularly retrieve the change inside the phone than it can possibly be worth.
Once, payphones made money for both the Phone Company and NYCTA, and so paid for themselves. Like it or not, in our present culture, if something doesnt make money, and lots of it, dont expect the entity or endeavor to be well-run.
Is the solution $2.00 Payphones? Free Payphones? No Payphones? Or maybe wire the entire system for cell coverage? OK, it will take years to design and install, at a cost HUNDREDS of millions of dollars. Who can afford to do that, upfront? When theyre finished and they control every single call made from underground, what do you figure theyre going to charge you, per call?

By: Victoria

Victoria — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 03:00:14 +0000

I’m surprised it would even occur to the people at the Straphangers’ Campaign to undertake this operation. I, for one, have completely forgotten about the existence of payphones. But you do raise an interesting point about where the phones are that don’t work. And I don’t blame that woman for being so reticent with the phone; I always think they seem kind of dirty too.