Why LinkNYC Installations Stopped Last Year, and Other Sexy Topics

Now I know why installations of LinkNYC kiosks came to a halt last year. They could afford to take a break. The clue came from Amendment 2 of the original franchise agreement. This amendment includes outlines of the required quantity and distribution of LinkNYC kiosks for each year of the 12-year (née 10-year) franchise agreement. 2018 was year three. This table lays out how many machines the City expected installed and how many PPTs (Public Pay Telephones) it wanted gone.

Based on numbers from the LinkNYC Kiosk Status dataset these goals have been met and even exceeded. Hooray for the brave new world. It also appears that the first new installation of 2019 took place on February 23, at 2853 Broadway in Manhattan.

Borough	Target # LinkNYC Installations for 2018	Actual # of Installations for 2018
Brooklyn	241	256
Bronx	133	137
Manhattan	985	1165
Queens	260	266
Staten Island	34	34

Residents in some areas grouse on social media about not having LinkNYC, while those who have access are as likely to say they wish they did not. You can’t please everybody but either way it looks like the halt of installations was not as ominous a thing as outsider observers such as I might have thought. It makes sense that if the franchise would meet numbers on anything it would be distribution of advertising panels. The phone calling feature could go dead for days at a time with no acknowledgement. WiFi connectivity could be spotty to non-existent. But so long as those ads roll through and money keeps pouring in then all is well with the Smart City utopia.

While the installation part of the LinkNYC rollout could afford to take a break it doesn’t look like the two other cities involved in the program got Links any more quickly during New York’s installation hiatus. According to the Link Cities portal only 4 LinkNWK kiosks are alive in Newark with no more planned as of yet. Philadelphia reports 7 LinkPHL machines, with no more planned at this time.

I have not visited Philadelphia since LinkPHL machines appeared but I did make it to Newark soon after that city’s LinkNWK kiosks went live. As I commented at the time, LinkNWK already looked a lot like LinkNYC. One LinkNWK kiosk already did not work after just a few days. The other machine was monopolized by a dude who had pulled up a chair and charged his phone for at least 45 minutes.

Advertisers’ money may be pouring in to LinkNYC but Amendment 2 of the franchise agreement outlines how much money could be pouring out of the franchise’s coffers. The City has a right to levy penalties against CityBridge for kiosks installed but not activated within a 45-day grace period. The last page of the amendment contains this table detailing the “Liquidated Damages” CityBridge should pay for kiosks installed but never activated. A number of kiosks installed as far back as 2017 remain idle.

For example a never-activated LinkNYC kiosk at 128 Montague Street appeared on November 9, 2017. As of Friday it stayed inactive for 470 days. I would not know if this is due to a utility delay or not but either way CityBridge should be on the hook for about $20,000 in penalties for this kiosk alone, and tens of thousands more for all 8 of its kiosks installed in 2017 but never activated.

Over 50 kiosks, mostly in Manhattan, remain inactive since their installation in 2018.

Is the City actually levying “Liquidated  Damages” against CityBridge for kiosks that do nothing but occupy sidewalk space? Data on what kind of penalties DoITT levies against its franchises do not get published as a matter of course, as far as I can tell, but I’m happy to be wrong on that. The cynic in me assumes no penalties get levied against a corporate municipal insider granted such a sweetheart monopoly deal. Then again DoITT plays hardball at times, or at least they used to. The independent payphone service providers I’ve known used to grouse to me about DoITT’s relentless levying of penalties and fines against them for graffiti and vandalism of their phones. The City imposed these fines before the PSPs even knew the vandalism had occurred.