New York’s Payphone Apocalypse is Nigh

The person in this photo may well have been the last ever to use this payphone, formerly on 21st Street in Astoria, near the Bel Aire Diner. The phone was gone the very next day, replaced by a yellow mat that looks like it would perfectly fit a shower stall. I’m happy to see this person wore gloves while handling one of the likeliest conduits for transmission of Covid-19, though it does not look like he wore a mask.

The yellow mats that mark where payphones used to stand seem to have replaced the giant plywood pylons that have festered outside for, in some cases years. These pylons, labeled with promises of free WiFi coming soon, have created unignorable hazards, with splinters and nails jutting out of them. The yellow mats seem more elegant and efficient, but do they actually replace the pylons as a signal that a LinkNYC is coming, or do they not really mean anything?

I also find it curious that the two metal poles here remain, casting elegant shadows and all but not serving any purpose. My guess is that a second round of work will happen here, in which the poles get yanked and the square of sidewalk cement fully repaved.

If these mats actually replace the plywood smart city road warts in function I will tentatively give myself some credit. I pointed out what the hazards of the rotting pylons, and had my complaints amplified by TheCity.NYC, which questioned CityBridge on why it let those eyesores molder away in plain sight.

CityBridge ignored TheCity.NYC’s question but at least I know they were called out for this problem they created, and that they possibly attempted to address it by not using honkin’ huge plywood husks as markers but yellow mats instead.

THE PAYPHONE APOCALYPSE IS UPON US

As of March New York had about 3,000 payphones on its sidewalks. That number appears to have decreased significantly, and the long-promised payphone apocalypse has finally arrived. As a long-time observer of these pieces of street furniture I find their absence jarring, but all I can ask is: What took so long? LinkNYC was supposed to come through like a stampede, replacing and supplementing the old payphones with Smart City kiosks hailed as bridges over the digital divide. The rollout of LinkNYC, the so-called “payphone of the future”, has ceased, while the removal of payphones continues.

In early March Jessica Tisch, head of the city agency that oversees payphones, ordered removal of “hundreds” of payphones. With 3,000 phones on the streets at the time it seemed that ordering “hundreds” removed might have signaled intent to keep a quantity of them available.

Covid-19 might have changed that line of thinking, expediting the removal of all these germ-carrying contagion conduits.

I can only go by personal observation, since statistics are not published nor is public input solicited before removals. But the opening salvo in purging Astoria of payphones appears to have been in May, when a phone I formerly used frequently disappeared from 31st Street and 38th Avenue. Since then I’ve seen fast and furious removals from Ditmars down to Queens Plaza, and from 21st Street on up to Astoria Boulevard South near 44th Street.

I spent most of my time during the lockdown in Astoria, Woodside, and Midtown. Overall I’ve seen about four dozen phones removed. What I’m not seeing is any concrete indication these phones will be replaced with LinkNYC kiosks, as so ambitiously promised.

As for Midtown I had thought the removal of two PRAYphones across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral might have signaled the beginning of the end for payphones in that area. Thus far, as of last week that is, a wider payphone purge seems not to have reached midtown or the Upper East Side, so far the only parts of Manhattan I’ve had opportunity to canvas. Astoria and Woodside, on the other hand, are nearing payphone extinction.

It also appears ongoing maintenance of existing payphones has ceased altogether.

WHAT RATIONALE?

I would not know what rationale informs the decision to take out a particular phone, or if a coherent rationale even exists. I would assume phones stay when they make enough advertising revenue to attractively fill the coffers of CityBridge and the City. It would have nothing to do with the public amenity of a payphone providing a communications safety net to New Yorkers who do not have cellphones.

Phones that actually worked, like the one above, get sent to scrap while non-working phones stay in place. Meanwhile, payphone enclosures on which advertising panels were still being sold got taken away. To me it makes no sense but perhaps it signals that the order to remove “hundreds” of payphones was upgraded to “thousands” and that they will vanish from the streets as quickly as logistically possible.