Metro

Subway pay-phone service going down

If you see something, say something — if you can find a working pay phone.

Less than half of the pay phones in the city’s subways actually work, a 36 percent decrease from the same time last year, according to an MTA survey released last week.

In all, only 46 percent of subway pay phones are currently operable.

And finding a way to make a call underground — where only a handful of subway stations are wired for cellphones — is only going to get harder.

Verizon — which operates pay phones for the MTA — sold its pay-phone division a few years ago to California-based Pacific Telemanagement Services. Now PTS is rapidly removing the few remaining phones left in the system as the MTA expands its plans for wireless and Wi-Fi service.

At one point, the subways had 3,600 pay phones at 468 subway stations. In February, the number of phones dropped to 2,000.

And PTS plans to remove 1,300 more in the coming months, the MTA says.

That will leave just 700 phones left.

Transit Wireless — the company that contracted with the MTA to install the cell and Wi-Fi service — was supposed to connect another 30 stations by the end of last year.

But those plans were delayed by Hurricane Sandy.

Now, the new service won’t come until later this year. Six stations already have the service — the A/C/E at 14th St, the A/C at 23rd St, the 1/2/3 at 14th St, the F/M at 14th St, and the Sixth and Eighth Ave stops on the L. The company claims that its goal of wiring the entire system by 2016 is still on track.