Last week I wrote about CityBridge’s demonstration of how not to remove a payphone, and questioned whether a favorite payphone of mine recently removed from service had made way for a “Smart City” LinkNYC kiosk replacement. Knowing how eagerly CityBridge has placed kiosks everywhere they possibly could for the first two years of the rollout I ½ jokingly suggested that this phone was gone and that was the end of that. It turns out that’s true. The fully functional phone at this spot was routed, replaced not with a LinkNYC kiosk but with an empty square of pavement.
This removal, characteristically of the Amart City stampede, occurred with no public input solicited and no advance warning of the phone’s impending removal. I do not think it is asking too much of CityBridge to post some kind of heads up that a payphone will go away soon, even if nothing the public said or did in response could stop its removal from happening.
If a LinkNYC kiosk did pop up here it would have meant that either CityBridge was setting those things up without filing proper paperwork with DoITT, or that DoITT gave the consortium carte blanche to erect kiosks wherever the hell they wanted. That’s because neither this location nor another one described below appear on the map of LinkNYC New Permit Applications. It looks like neither hypothetical scenario is true. Payphones get removed now with no replacement.
Other people beside I used this payphone. For now those folks remain in luck assuming they know of another payphone just two blocks away, under the el train. But that phone frequently chokes, possibly on account of the rattling seizure it experiences every time an overhead train roars past.
This phone had its outages but, ironically enough, I had used it in November to call 311. I called 311 from a payphone to report that it was impossible to make phone calls from any of the LinkNYC kiosks, the so-called payphone replacement. For 3 days I had tried making phone calls from dozens upon dozens of those machines in Queens, Manhattan, and Brooklyn. Not a single call went through from any of those kiosks. If this “payphone of the future” intends to prove itself a dependable replacement for traditional payphones it has a long way to go.
Another old payphone enclosure in this area, at 31st Street and 31st Avenue in Astoria, also got routed, with the expected LinkNYC replacement not installed. Unlike the previous phone, which worked well and had display advertising on 2 panels, the clamshell payphone enclosure at this spot had been empty for years. I am not complaining about having some free and open sidewalk space. I just wish I knew what it says about the status of the LinkNYC rollout when no new installations have happened since August and payphones removed do not get replaced.
I took many pictures of the first phone mentioned in this story. Here is one, when the advertising panel somehow popped open making it look like the sucker wanted to fly away. Fly away it did, but not on its own terms. The phone’s number was 718-609-0277. It served me well.
