New Use for Old Boxes

Every year we fight to keep our telephone boxes from being removed by BT. The increase coverage for mobile phones has reduced the income from telephone boxes. Slowly but surely BT is removing our telephone boxes, they claim it costs more to look after the boxes than they generate in income. So I was intrigued to see an Environmental Transport Association (ETA) report about how Spain has found a new use for their public telephone boxes - as re-charging points for electric vehicles

Many of Devon's rural telephone call-boxes would be relatively easy to adapt as recharging points because they tend to be located close to the roadside and already have their own electricity supply and obviously telephone line and payment point.Following Spain's example could give our boxes a new lease of life and new source of revenue for BT.

A trial in Spain will see 30 telephone boxes around the city transformed into charging points as part of a network of 546 state-subsidised recharging points, which will also cover Seville and Barcelona.

The Spanish government plans to spend the equivalent of £8.7m on encouraging the use of at least 2,000 electric cars in the three cities over the next two years.