New York City removes its last surviving public payphone
Marking the end of a very long era, officials held a send-off ceremony earlier today for the two last surviving coin-operated pay phones on the streets of New York City. The pay phones, which were the last in operation after the city began removing them en masse beginning in 2015, were located near Times Square at Seventh Avenue and 49th Street.
While the once-ubiquitous street-side pay phone is, as of this morning, officially extinct in the Big Apple (or maybe not?), some do remain on private property along with a quartet of Superman-style full-length public phone booths. While not quite the same, this is good news for nostalgists who long to relive the thrill of frantically emptying out their pockets or purses in public while in search of loose change so that they can check in with the office or discuss pressing matters with their physicians. (However, as noted by CBS News, it’s unclear if these remaining old-school phone booths are still actually operational or just for show.)
Many spots across the city that previously were the sites of free-standing pay phones are now home to LinkNYC kiosks, tech-enabled public communications hubs-slash-digital billboards featuring fast and free Wi-Fi along with charge-only USB ports and handy-dandy, microphone-equipped keypads or tablets that enable users can place gratis calls to anywhere in the United States. The kiosks also provide weather and transit alerts as well as access to social services directories.
There it goes! The last free-standing pay phones were removed this morning in Times Square. Truly the end of an era but also, hopefully, the start of a new one with more equity in technology access! @LinkNYC is one great way we are achieving this. pic.twitter.com/03lFCT6iI2
— Mark D. Levine (@MBPMarkLevine) May 23, 2022
The just-removed payphone near Times Square will be replaced with a LinkNYC kiosk. Since first launching in 2016, there are now nearly 2,000 CityBridge-operated kiosks located across all five boroughs with plans to expand further, with an eye towards bringing free and abundant 5G coverage to underserved neighborhoods outside of Manhattan.
“As a native New Yorker, saying goodbye to the last street payphone is bittersweet because of the prominent place they’ve held in the city’s physical landscape for decades,” Matthew Fraser, commissioner of the city’s Office of Technology and Innovation, said in a statement shared by CBS News. “Just like we transitioned from the horse and buggy to the automobile and from the automobile to the airplane, the digital evolution has progressed from pay phones to high-speed Wi-Fi kiosks to meet the demands of our rapidly changing daily communications needs.”
The payphone removed today will be preserved and put on display at the Museum of the City of New York as part of its ongoing Analog City: NYC B.C. exhibit.
