Public phones to be dropped from Chicago public transit lines

[Gidney N Cloyd]

I don't get this at all. If it costs the city nothing, why remove the phones and screw over the poor non-cell people and inconvenience the folks (like me) whose phone batteries die at crummy times.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-09-20/news/ct-met-cta-payphones-removed-20100920_1_coin-operated-phones-cell-pacific-telemanagement-services

Kenneth Tucker's cell phone was dead Monday afternoon, and he needed to check the status of a Western Union transfer. So Tucker, 55, paid 50 cents and made the call from a pay phone on the CTA's Red Line platform at Lake Street. Before long, that may not be possible.

In April, the CTA declined to renew its contract with Pacific Telemanagement Services, which operates the pay phones, and now the transit agency plans to have the remaining pay phones removed from its train platforms and bus enclosures.

"In recent years, with more people using cell phones, there has been a steady decline in the use of coin-operated phones, which has resulted in a significant drop in revenue for the CTA," CTA spokeswoman Sheila Gregory said in an e-mail. In April, there were 559 pay phones on CTA property. Pacific Telemanagement began removing the least used, unprofitable phones, leaving just 179 phones across the CTA system, said Michael Rossi, the firm's chief operating officer.

But the firm wants to keep operating the phones that are left. "It may not be a significant contribution to the CTA, but it's not costing them anything," Rossi said. While Kurt Gibbs, vice president of sales for Pacific Telemanagement, said the CTA pays nothing for the maintenance of the phones, Gregory said phone maintenance has cost the CTA $200,000 since 2004, when AT&T operated the pay phones. Pacific Telemanagement took over in 2008.

[customerserviceguy]

1. I doubt you'd even see a pay phone in America

twenty years from now, except in a museum. You can say that about newspapers (the foldable kind) in about twenty-five.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

5. Agreed, absolutely,but the point remains that NOW there is a segment of society that relies on them.

There may be a new model of publicly available communication coming to replace the old pay phones but it's not defined or in place yet.
If the main user group of pay phones has shrunk to primarily the poor, and if keeping just a sufficient number of pay phones available in CTA stations costs the CTA nothing, then it would seem that getting rid of them has only one purpose: helping to drive the poor away from CTA stations.

[customerserviceguy]

6. There are all sorts of cheap prepaid phones out there

I'll bet it's not worth it to the telcos to keep 25 cent payphone service available.

[customerserviceguy]

2. Dupe, deleted

[WinkyDink]

3. More anti-poor actions.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. Yep

[SoCalDem]

7. I think the vandalism costs are high for them & the phone companies are

probably happy to be done with them:(

In some places, they are also used for drug dealing.. I guess the dealers don't want their personal phone records being traced.

I am old enough to remember real phone booths..and as a kid would always check them for the "change"..

[Gidney N Cloyd]

10. In this particular case, though, this phone company wants to keep them available.

It would cost the CTA nothing but the CTA still wants to get rid of the phones.

[DiverDave]

8. Chicago O'Hare airport

1975 the first payphone that I ever saw that was 20 cents.
I was shocked.
A 100% increase? For a kid from a little town in Oregon it was an eye opener.

[SoCalDem]

9. Eeek.. I remember nickel phone calls & nickel cokes too

:)