SEPTA Rider phone home!

rslitman wrote:

Matthew Mitchell wrote:Verizon was removing the phones from Market East last week.

At such a big station, I would think they'd be able to keep at least one pay phone for those who have forgotten or lost their cell phones or their phone broke or their battery is dead or they just haven't embraced this technology.

I was in Market East on Saturday, June 18 and noticed some pay phones. They are on the ticket office level at the station end where the ticket office is not open as long as the other ticket office, near a SEPTA police station. They're up against the wall, closest to the stairs/elevators used by those exiting trains coming from the Reading side or going to board trains going to the Pennsylvania side.

So the report of pay phones being gone from Market East may be premature, fortunately. On the other hand, I didn't try them to see if they really work!

Payphones are either owned by the local exchange carrier (Verizon in this case) or privately.

Private payphones were a booming business until the cellphone explosion made them largely irrelevant. In urban areas, they're high maintenance. Now they share the shelf with pagers, the Newtown line, and dial-up internet modems.

Barring specific regulation, I wouldn't be surprised to see them all gone within 5 years.

railfan32 wrote:At my train station (on the R5 Paoli line), there were pay-phones, but they took them out when the new station signs were being installed along the line.

There were new stations signs installed at ur R5 station?

rslitman wrote:I think the pay phone at West Trenton, which I actually used a few times in the early 2000s, before I started carrying a cell phone on a daily basis, is still there. It is not a Verizon phone. A few cab companies have left their business cards next to it. They rely on business from people who took the train there thinking they were going to Trenton. Since the 608 NJT bus only runs to Trenton from there in the afternoon rush hour, any other time, the choices are to go all the way back to Center City and switch or to call a cab.

I noticed one day last week that the pay phone at West Trenton is gone.

At least two local public libraries, Huntingdon Valley and Horsham, have also removed their pay phones in the past few years. The Horsham library was still a relatively new library when they got rid of this phone, so it wasn't in place very long. Pay phones at libraries have traditionally been used by kids to call their parents to come pick them up when their research or other library activity was done. But now even kids carry cell phones. One or both of these libraries have told me that if a kid doesn't have a cell phone and needs to call home, they'll let them use the library's desk phone, which of course is at taxpayers' expense.

I wouldn't worry about the taxpayer expense of a local phone call. It's included in basic landline service; that is they're already paid for just by having a phone.

oknazevad wrote:I wouldn't worry about the taxpayer expense of a local phone call. It's included in basic landline service; that is they're already paid for just by having a phone.

That's not always the case with business lines (though a lot has changed with competition in the telecoms business).