Subject: [NEXTEL-1] MTA’s Celling Point: Pay Phones Derailed

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 12:28:29 -0400

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-fone0916,0,6105276.story?coll=ny-linews-headlines

MTA’s Celling Point: Pay Phones Derailed

By Joshua Robin
Staff Writer

September 15, 2003, 9:17 PM EDT

Passengers on the Long Island Rail Road who don't have cellular phones might want
to start to think
about buying one or borrowing one from the person in the next seat.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to strip pay phones from all LIRR
and Metro-North
commuter trains, leaving cell phones as the only way to make an on-board call. A
decade after the
introduction of "Rail Call" to commuter trains, the MTA has found that, with the
glut of cell phones, no
one is using the pay phones anymore.

"Why keep them?" asked Roco Krsulic, director of real estate for the MTA. He said
since 2000,
revenues from the "Rail Call" phones have decreased 90 percent.

Krsulic said he is pressing for the move, which the MTA board is expected to
approve later this month, because the contract
between the MTA and AT&T, which provides the phone service, expires next year.

The MTA plans to save money by having AT&T remove the phones, which are mostly on
Metro-North lines. Additionally,
commuter rail officials decided not to include on-board pay phones when designing
new cars.

When the phones were first introduced in 1993, calls cost $1.75 a minute, plus tax
-- far more than currently on many cellular
phones.

Jim McGovern, chairman of the Long Island Rail Road Commuters Council and an MTA
board member, said he saw no
problem with the removal.

"Every other person's got a cell phone," McGovern said. He said he was initially
concerned that someone without a cell phone
might be without means to make a call in an emergency, but then concluded the
person could borrow one. "I don't think it's a
problem," he said.

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