Fun Maps: NYC Payphones Are Disappearing, But The Ones That Remain Still Make Money

We first reported about the shrinking number of working emergency call boxes, and this week Brokelyn discovered the latest numbers from New York City’s Independent Budget Office, which takes a look at the revenue from the remaining pay phones. This map shows the locations of 11,249 working pay phones in the five boroughs, half that number in Manhattan alone. The total number is down by almost half from 2008 with the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island seeing about a 60% drop. The dwindling number of pay phones shrinks the city’s 10% revenue share from calls, but the IBO report highlights that this old-school form of communication is still making the City a pretty penny. Yet, the city is planning to phase out the phones by 2014.

The money coming in from actual phone calls, which was about $3 million in 2008 has shrunk to about to a third of that. In the above graph, the IBO reports that revenue from advertisements on the phone booths themselves, of which the city gets 36%, has been in a steady increase since 2010, totaling approximately $16 million in 2012.

As is the case with the emergency call boxes, the number of working pay phones (current as of January 2013) was drastically diminished due to Hurricane Sandy last year. But somehow, seven wooden phone booths still exist in NYC. Follow our Fun Maps series to find other neat graphical representations of cities and check out our roundup of really old-school wooden payphones in NYC.