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Consider New York’s public pay telephones. They may be outdated in the digital age, but they have telephone wiring and are often supplied with electricity. More important, they already occupy precious city real estate — and already have the permits necessary to stay there. Is it possible to imagine some of them seamlessly replaced with electric vehicle charging stations, with vital dedicated parking spaces?

New York City still has about 8,000 active public telephone kiosks, and their slow fade has led to discussions about repurposing the space they occupy for another public use. The franchise contracts that the city awarded for the operation of public phones will expire in October 2014, and looking for inspiration, the city sponsored a design contest that in the words of one winning team “was an opportunity to reimagine a piece of outdated city infrastructure in the age of mobile.”

Winners, chosen in March, imagined interactive informational portals bristling with Wi-Fi, touch screens and solar panels. Some winners also included electric vehicle recharging as part of the design, and the concept has been discussed by the city.

The city gets a lucrative revenue stream from advertising on public phone kiosks, and more than 3,700 of them (some with ads, some without) are managed by Van Wagner Communications, an outdoor advertising company. Mark Johnston, the president of Van Wagner, said in a telephone interview that turning phone booths into recharging stations is “an idea that’s been explored for years, and it’s one of many possible uses.”

Mr. Johnston said that conflicting city interests would make E.V. charging stations a challenge, especially because different agencies were responsible for the public sidewalk and the parking spaces that would be involved.

“There are insurance questions, and questions about how long a car could park there,” he said. “It gets complicated very quickly.”

Rahul Merchant, chief information and innovation officer and commissioner in the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, described the charger conversion as “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. If we proceed with that concept, we would have to work with our colleagues in the D.O.T. to ensure there are no conflicts on that side,” he said, referring to the Transportation Department.

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Getting all the relevant agencies to sign on could be difficult, but the idea has some strong support. At the unveiling of the BMW i3 electric vehicle in Manhattan on July 29, Peter Schwarzenbauer, a member of BMW’s Board of Management, mentioned the conversion of phone kiosks as a way to provide E.V. charging in crowded New York.

“I think that perhaps 3,000 phones could be converted, with two to three parking spaces in front of each,” he said. In 10 years, he added, it could be difficult to find a gas station in New York.

Jay Friedland, legislative director of the advocacy group Plug In America, said that finding urban charging locations could be difficult.

“The phone kiosks already have electric power, and it would be great for them to become recharging stations,” he said in an interview. In one California town, he said, some E.V. owners have plugged their cars into the electric wiring installed by the municipality for Christmas tree lights.

Andrew Winston, a co-author of the book “Green to Gold,” described the proposed conversion as “a great industrial transformation story.”

“You’re losing one whole line of business, the pay phones,” he said, “but reusing the infrastructure that’s already there.”

One transportation expert worries that the city already devotes too many resources to cars. Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, which is based in New York, said in an interview: “I’m not alone in wincing a little bit. This is one of the things that has been looked at, but cars, no matter how green they are — even if they run on sunlight — still represent a lot of space pollution. They just take up so much room. 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.”

Given the amount of red tape involved, it could be years before the phone kiosks are repurposed, if the idea is approved. The future of the pay phone is to be decided through a formal request for proposals that the city said would be released in the coming months. In the meantime, the city says there are pilot programs with pay phone Wi-Fi at 13 locations and fast-cycle digital advertising on some kiosks around Times Square.

The design contest resulted in other ideas, including bike parking, a semiprivate booth for making quiet calls in a noisy city and an information center with weather, historical data and neighborhood information. Many entrants saw the kiosk of tomorrow as offering a convenient place to charge … a cellphone?