The phones of San Francisco's Subways

[GG]

Those BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) white 554s connect to the "station agent" booths in each station.  The station agent is the BART employee in each station who is there to help if your ticket gets screwed up in some way or if you need directions or have an emergency or whatever. 

20 years ago you would also see AE compact wall sets there, with the square dial blanks that AE used on those. 

Presumably the way they get Cortelco to make those up for them is to order them in quantities.  And the reason they use 554s rather than 2554s is probably due in part to ease of service to repair them.  Also I vaguely recall they used to have (maybe still do) dial number labels with very large numbers written on them, so they were more easily identified than with the small number labels that are used on the 2554s.   (Cortelco still makes the 3554 wall set with the round insert for the touchtone dial, so the only special part needed for these 554s is for Cortelco to do a run of dial blanks in white, which they used to do in red for "hotline" desk sets, so this should be relatively easy.)