New York City reimagines payphones as EV charging stations

Payphones may be antiquated, but they're everywhere. That’s why New York City, which has about 8,000 payphone kiosks and generates significant revenue from almost half of them through advertising, sponsored a contest "to reimagine a piece of outdated city infrastructure," according to one of the winning design teams.

Winners selected in March envisioned reinventing the city's payphone kiosks as "interactive informational portals bristling with Wi-Fi, touch screens and solar panels," according to The New York Times. Other ideas included converting the kiosks into places for bike parking, booths for making quiet cellphone calls and information centers with historical and neighborhood data.

Some entries also considered including electric vehicle charging as part of the payphone kiosk makeover, and the idea has been considered by the city officials. Rahul Merchant, a commissioner in the city's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, called converting the kiosks into EV charging stations "a great idea we should absolutely entertain. There is enough electric power in the conduits to turn the kiosks into charging stations for electric cars," he told The Times.

While there's no shortage of public phone kiosks with power and communication infrastructure that could be turned into EV charging stations, there is one aspect to the concept that the city does lack: parking spaces.

Another potential stumbling block is bureaucratic red tape. Mark Johnston, president of Van Wagner Communications, the company that manages ads on more than 3,700 payphone kiosks in the city, told The Times that the idea is likely to run into opposing objectives among agencies with jurisdiction over public sidewalks and parking. "There are insurance questions, and questions about how long a car could park there," he said. "It gets complicated very quickly."

But that didn’t stop BMW, which unveiled its new i3 EV in Manhattan last month, from envisioning thousands of the city's payphones as charging stations. "I think that perhaps 3,000 phones could be converted, with two to three parking spaces in front of each," said BMW board member Peter Schwarzenbauer. He even predicted that in 10 years it could be a challenge to locate a gas station in New York City.

But not everyone likes the idea of EVs taking up already scarce parking and space in the city. "Cars, no matter how green they are – even if they run on sunlight – still represent a lot of space pollution," said Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives.

White added that "true urban-minded people think of sustainable transportation as a bus, a pair of shoes or, increasingly, a bicycle. Developing more comfortable walking spaces in the city, that's what policy makers should be focused on," he said.

The New York Times noted that it could take years for the city to approve the ideas for repurposing payphone kiosks, given the process involved. A formal request for proposals that the city plans to release later this year will decide the fate of Manhattan's payphones.

"The phone kiosks already have electric power, and it would be great for them to become recharging stations," said Jay Friedland, legislative director of the EV advocacy group Plug In America, adding that locating charging stations in urban areas is a challenge. In the meantime, EV owners have to be creative in finding places to charge. In one California town, Friedland said, some owners have plugged their EVs into municipality facilities used seasonally for Christmas tree lights.

[Source: The New York Times]

Source: MSN