I do work with "open data" on a near-obsessive basis and -- friends, please do not trust "open data" portals to reflect reality accurately. The datasets are often curated, categories changed during the ETL processes, rows missing, and things like that. For example, Chicago's "crimes" dataset intentionally doesn't include all homicides. Can't remember the exact dataset, but I once had a conversation with Chicago's head of open data who told me that they intentionally removed many rows because they were concerned that the public was going to misinterpret the results... but didn't make it clear that rows were missing. So I guess everybody gets the opportunity to misinterpret the results!

FOIA is the better alternative because it gives you the original, pre-cleaned data. Open data is a lie.

Would be neat if instead an open-ended challenge ("here's some data, do something cool") the MTA instead shared a list of hypothetical or real problems to solve and provided data that could be potentially useful in the exploration/solution to the problem.

Tried building something with Cursor + Chatgpt in 30mins not bad for the initial exploration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3mkXPdTVlI and the demo link: https://mtachallenge.streamlit.app/

I could not find dataset with payroll hours reported and overtime reimbursed for each MTA employee.

I wanted to investigate how well MTA is managing its workforce and compensation (as to require additional tax in form of Congestion Pricing to fix its budget hole), but there seems to be no dataset for that.

Does anyone have links to MTA payroll/hours/overtime related dataset?

or alternatively, I need dataset to study each and every subway improvement project, and components of each project in materials, labor and etc

Time for someone to crack their knuckles and do a Power Broker-style MTA Open Data mashup :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_Broker

Interesting, these open data challenges were all the rage 10 years ago. Wonder why the sudden trip down memory lane.

Some really nice example visualizations from Matt Yarri and Julia Lynn at the MTA: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/matt-yarri_some-of-the-data-w...

https://new.mta.info/article/introducing-subway-origin-desti...

I keep clicking on these 'MTA' articles expecting them to be about a "message transfer agent".

Then I think, oh, right, wrong MTA. Guess I've spent too much time dealing with email servers.

Hold my Metrocard.

The prize is very underwhelming. If they really want people to spend effort on it, they need to make the prize worth it.

Why would you region block a webpage like this

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can someone share the data?

Intersting challenge. Here is the NotebookLM Audio: MTA's Open Data program https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/286a30b9-b17f-4dac-9e...