An idea whose time has come?

From Crains:

Virtually every New Yorker over the age of 12 has a cellphone, and the call boxes are no longer a part of the public consciousness. It would not even occur to most people to seek one out in case of an emergency. The 15,000 boxes cost taxpayers more than $6 million a year, and 85% of calls from them are false alarms.

But we cannot rely on common sense to prevail. Ripping out the call boxes and leaving nothing in their place would risk the same hysterical reaction that defeated the plan in 1996 and again in 2011, when a deaf-rights group stopped the Bloomberg administration's attempt. The city would have to offer New Yorkers something better in their place.

Fortunately, it can. The de Blasio administration is in the process of replacing its virtually obsolete pay phones with 7,500 free Wi-Fi hot spots. Anyone will be able to use the new kiosks, called Links, to surf the Web on a provided tablet or their own smartphones, make free domestic phone calls, charge their devices and—yes—call 911. Not only will the project cost taxpayers nothing, but thanks to the advertising space that the city's private partner will sell, the city will reap more than $500 million over 12 years.

Call boxes made beautiful in Woodside

Hi QC,

Someone has painted a couple of the fire alarm boxes in Woodside. This one is on 32nd Avenue. I wonder who is painting them? I doubt the FDNY, but I guess I could be wrong. Anyway, they look great.

- Anonymous

Call boxes are here to stay

From the NY Times:

A federal judge in Manhattan has refused to allow the Bloomberg administration to eliminate 15,000 emergency-help boxes from New York’s streets, saying the city’s proposed alternative involving public pay phones is not adequate because it would discriminate against the deaf and hearing-impaired.

The Bloomberg administration last year asked the judge, Robert W. Sweet of Federal District Court, to lift a 1996 injunction that blocked a similar attempt by the city to remove its existing street alarm boxes.

In its request, the city estimated that deactivation of the street-box system would save $6.3 million a year. It also argued that use of the boxes had declined substantially because of cellphones, and that about 85 percent of calls were false alarms. The city proposed an alternative of public pay phones combined with a tapping protocol that would allow deaf and hearing-impaired callers to signal whether they needed police or fire services.

But Judge Sweet, in a decision filed Monday, said that the number of pay phones had declined substantially, that they were not always well maintained, and that the tapping protocol had not been tested with the pay-phone system. “The injunction remains an equitable solution,” he wrote.