NYC Public Payphone Map: How Many Are Left?

How many public payphones are left in New York City?

The city's Independent Budget Office (IBO) put together this map of every payphone in the city, and supplied some interesting numbers as well.

In January 2013 there were 11,249 working payphones in public locations citywide, a decline of almost 50 percent since 2008.

* The Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island have seen decreases of about 60 percent.

* The number of payphones has fallen 33 percent in Manhattan and 52 percent in Queens.

Current payphone vendor agreements expire in 2014. Earlier this year the city asked for ideas to "reinvent payphones." Responses included turning phone booths into "info centers" and "digital nodes." One idea calls for turning pay phones into:

"... a distributed sensor network providing real-time and hyper-local records of the city’s rain levels, pollution and other environmental conditions."

Even though the  number of pay phones has decreased dramatically, the city is still making money off the phone booths:

* The city collects 10 percent of revenue from calls placed from pay phones

* The city collects 36 percent of revenue from advertisements on the pay phones.

* City revenue from calls has declined steadily since 2008.

* City revenue from advertising has increased sharply since 2010.


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