Disappearing pay phones

The Track 2 platform pay phones at Dupont have vanished. The Track 1 side still has its but I wonder if this was part of the deal with multi-carrier cellular within stations. I suspect systemwide, more will start going missing.

I've always assumed Verizontal had signed some long-term contract with WMATA that obligated them to keep the phones there. Anyone know the facts?

http://wmata.com/about_metro/news/Press ... aseID=4798


Metro is dropping virtually ALL the pay phones at stations. For a short period, they will have one at the entrance, equipped with a TTY.

They blithely assume everyone will always have a working cell phone.

I guess I can't make a safety argument since if you now dial "911" on a pay phone and expect to reach the WMATA cops; you''ll be waiting a while....

That raises an interesting point. With all the cellular work going on in the tunnels, are we sure that location services are working well enough for the 911 call centers to know where a call in coming from? Generally a wired phone is going to be better than a cell phone, but I guess that option is going away.

Telephones are moving from being building based to person based. Phone numbers are now largely attached to people, not locations and this is a good thing. When for $20 you can buy a tracfone with minutes there is no reason why anyone shouldn't have a cell phone with them. Payphones are largely gone from the American landscape and they aren't coming back.

I can't remember from the last time I was there, are there emergency call boxes in the stations? Up here (Boston) we have those which can contact either customer service or transit police, although fortunately I've been lucky enough not to need to test either.

"octr202"
I can't remember from the last time I was there, are there emergency call boxes in the stations?

Yes, at least one on every platform, I believe the other end of the intercom is in the station manager kiosk. There is also a phone under the blue light in the tunnel beyond the end of every platform. Those phones connect to central control. At one time one could dial an outside line from those phones.

If there is an emergency is a passenger permitted to go for the blue phone beyond the platform or would a passenger get charged with some kind of trespassing infraction?

Davis

"strench707"
If there is an emergency is a passenger permitted to go for the blue phone beyond the platform or would a passenger get charged with some kind of trespassing infraction?

Technically speaking I would hazard a guess yes, but if the situation was such that using the blue light phone produced a quicker response by law enforcement or rescue personnel I would think they let it slide.

strench707 wrote:If there is an emergency is a passenger permitted to go for the blue phone beyond the platform or would a passenger get charged with some kind of trespassing infraction?

I think if there was an emergency that was enough to where I needed to use the tunnel phone, nailing me for going into the tunnel would be the last of WMATA's worries.

Sand Box John wrote:Yes, at least one on every platform, I believe the other end of the intercom is in the station manager kiosk.

You would be correct. The platform pylon intercoms go to the station manager. I believe those also cause an alarm to go off at the kiosk, and cause an amber strobe to flash on top of the kiosk.

I can't say for sure about the strobe and alarm, because the time I had to push the platform pylon button was at Rosslyn for a malfunctioning gate (where I was going, it made more sense to use the elevator), and so I was underground and the kiosk at Rosslyn is at street level, out of sight. I know for a fact that hitting the elevator intercom button will causethe alarm and the strobe, because I've accidentally leaned on an elevator intercom button in the past, and then apologized to the station manager for hitting the button.

SchuminWeb wrote:

Sand Box John wrote:Yes, at least one on every platform, I believe the other end of the intercom is in the station manager kiosk.

You would be correct. The platform pylon intercoms go to the station manager. I believe those also cause an alarm to go off at the kiosk, and cause an amber strobe to flash on top of the kiosk.

Which makes it impossible to use to call the cops.
I know, I've tried.

And if the Manager is not in his kiosk, no one will answer.

John is right, go for phone at the EPO trip station. [I think all three are together...]

It's good that they're disappearing! The only people who use the pay phones these days are drug addicts, the last kind of people Metro needs!

jayo wrote:It's good that they're disappearing! The only people who use the pay phones these days are drug addicts, the last kind of people Metro needs!

Thats right, folks who don't have a credit cards, children, people who lost their phone, tourists....all drug addicts!

jayo wrote:It's good that they're disappearing! The only people who use the pay phones these days are drug addicts, the last kind of people Metro needs!

I wouldn't put it that way. You have to look at pay phones as something where there is a monthly cost to having the thing connected, and in the old days you would make back your cost as people use the things. But since most people have cellphones these days, few people use the pay phones and as a result the things become a revenue drain rather than a small source of revenue, and at some point you ask yourself why bother even having the things.

Emergencies are another matter entirely, IMO.

Everyone: Interesting note about the elimination of pay phones from METRO stations...

I remember an interesting price note: At one point in the early 80s each jurisdiction had a different pay phone charge...
Even though it was all C&P Telephone...For local calls DC was 15 cents,MD was 20 cents and VA was 25 cents...

I also remember that if you dialed close-in calls to MD and VA from DC you did not need the area code and you got a local rate...

You could save a dime for example if you were calling Arlington from DC then...when it made a little difference...

Once you had to dial the area code based on distance (301 MD and 703 VA) you paid more...

Where telephones are concerned things are quite different today as we all know...remember cell phones were literally in their infancy then and were quite expensive...I believe the first practical useable cellphone was one in an attache case from about 1976...

Thoughts from MACTRAXX