How cool is this? A few weeks ago I submitted a request to New York City to release its dataset of PPTs (Public Pay Telephones). This was actually the second time I had made the request. My first request was ignored, but in the wake of Sandy it appears that payphones are being taken seriously for their role in public safety.

A number of payphones which I know exist do not appear on this map, and a number of phantom listings for payphones removed long ago also mar the quality of this listing, but it’s a good start. As far as I can tell there are no indoor payphones on this map. The old booths inside the main branch of the New York Public Library are not listed, nor is the one remaining payphone in the basement of the Trump Tower. I didn’t expect indoor locations to be on this list since the city does not zone them.

None of the payphones in Central Park are listed.

Most notably, the map does not appear to list any payphones located in subway stations. Perhaps that is a homeland-securing measure or some sort to complement the fact that calls made from payphones in New York City’s subway system show fake caller ID information.

Nevertheless, this is a pretty representative snapshot of where to find an outdoor payphone when you need one. I’m going to get to work on supplementing this map with my collection of photos and other information.

My original request for PPT locations cited disaster planning and public safety as a reason for making payphone locations public. In a way its unfortunate that it took a superstorm like Sandy to remind people that public telephones still exist and that their value in emergency situations should not be taken for granted. Disasters come in all shapes and sizes, from superstorms to street muggings. An interesting statistic to illustrate this point comes from Miami, where the Sun-Sentinal in South Florida reports:

“First American’s [Michael] Kohner said that his company’s data show that pay phones are, even more, the go-to for emergencies. In Miami, 911 calls from pay phones nearly doubled in the last five years, to 7,780 in fiscal year 2012, he said.”

It would be interesting to understand why the number of 911 calls made from payphones has doubled in the last 5 years. It may be for the same reason I use payphones to call 311: I don’t necessarily want my personal phone number to be recorded and left sitting in some government spreadsheet, associated with a pithy municipal complaint, inviting whatever embarrassment might come should that information be made public.

Whatever the reasons for the rise in 911 calls from Miami’s payphones I think that is exactly the type of information that payphone providers should use to convince local and state governments that public telephones genuinely do serve the public interest, and that not only should their wholesale removal be stopped but the “business” should be subsidized in the public interest. I put “business” in quotes because there is no payphone business. The very job of collecting coins from public phones costs more than the amount of money being collected. Payphones today survive largely on subsidies from display advertising and other telecom-related revenue streams.

As someone whose longtime interest in payphones has been met with a mix of ambivalence and ridicule I find it interesting to see the variety of perspectives giving fresh attention the subject. As far as I know this is the first release of public telephone locations by any large city. New York City’s release of payphone locations might not signal the salvation of the payphone nationwide but it does show that at least one city has taken public telephones’ role in public safety seriously enough to at least make them easier to find.