Pay phones.

Those big, clunky boxes affixed to public urinals (or were they called “phone booths”?) around the city in recent decades. Broken gray handsets, coin slots mucked up with gum.

Those phones are still to be found in subway stations, reports NYPIRG’s Straphangers Campaign, but don’t do much good anymore.  

In fact, one in four station pay phones’ sole purpose is to collect dust–or at least a few discarded MetroCards on its top. A study from the Straphangers Campaign found that 26% of 921 pay phones at 100 randomly selected stations was deemed “non-functioning”–meaning ”the handset was missing or unusable; there was no dial tone; surveyors were unable to connect a call to a 1-800 number; the coin slot was blocked; coins deposited did not register; or the telephone would not return a coin.”

The phones at least did better than two years ago, when 29% were of the non-functioning variety.

Around 24% of the malfunctioning phones had no dial tone, 23% would not return a coin, 18% wouldn’t take the coin in the first place, and 16% had a bum handset.

Contrary to the urban myth, 0% had needles filled with heroin or LSD in the coin slot.

Verizon handles the pay phones for the MTA. NYPIRG says previous contracts called for 95% to be “fully operative and in service at all times”, while the current contract says Verizon only has to “exercise good-faith effort to clear 95% of all known troubles within 24 hours.” 

The study was conducted by Straphangers Campaign field organizer Jason Chin-Fatt. (You think we’re going to make fun of his name. We’re not. Grow up.) Chin-Fatt says NYPIRG’s findings don’t exactly jibe with the MTA’s own pay phone study, which found 93% to be working just fine. According to the Straphangers, the MTA’s “surveyors do not perform a coin drop to test the phones, rating telephones as functioning if the surveyor notes an undamaged handset and is able to contact a specific 1-800 test number.”