[HN Gopher] MTA Open Data Challenge
___________________________________________________________________
MTA Open Data Challenge
Author : oftenwrong
Score : 171 points
Date : 2024-09-27 13:27 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (new.mta.info)
(TXT) w3m dump (new.mta.info)
| asjfkdlf wrote:
| The prize is very underwhelming. If they really want people to
| spend effort on it, they need to make the prize worth it.
| xtiansimon wrote:
| > "The winner will receive a vintage New York City Transit item
| from our memorabilia collection."
|
| Depends what it is. Long as it's not something you could steal
| yourself. Ha!
| jesterman wrote:
| One of the options is literally a trash can!
| https://new.mta.info/document/85441
|
| Or perhaps... a subway seat?
| https://new.mta.info/document/85661
| erikaww wrote:
| I'd give multiple weeks of time for a city trash can lol
| mannyv wrote:
| Their collection of vintage gum scrapings perhaps?
| noitpmeder wrote:
| Seems perfect actually! Attracts people that are interested in
| the subject matter, not just a proposed reward.
| maxverse wrote:
| "we're hiring people that really love programming and aren't
| just in it for the money"
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| It will look great in your portfolio.
| zeroxfe wrote:
| If you're doing it for the prize, then you're not the targeted
| audience :-)
| nxobject wrote:
| Never underestimate the value of surplus NYC subway memorabilia
| to a transit enthusiast. Especially signage from retired
| rolling stock.
| afavour wrote:
| IMO it deliberately establishes a tone. This challenge is for
| rail fans, it's not a generalised "use our API" hackathon type
| thing.
|
| Plus the MTA has a huge budget crunch. I really don't think
| they could justify spending money on something with such an
| unclear outcome.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| The prize is being able to say you won the prize on your
| resume. I assume a lot of college kids in data science are
| going to be going at this.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| I think it actually sounds kinda cool, if it's something unique
| that couldn't just be purchased!
| mcfedr wrote:
| Why would you region block a webpage like this
| safeimp wrote:
| Reading their terms, I'm guessing it's due to:
|
| > 3. Eligibility: The Challenge is open to legal residents of
| the United States. Entrants must be 18 years of age or older as
| of their date of entry. The Challenge is subject to federal,
| state, and local laws and regulations and is void where
| prohibited by law. Employees and contractors of the MTA, its
| subsidiaries, affiliates, and directors (collectively the
| "Employees"), as well as members of an Employee's immediate
| family and/or those living in the same household, are
| ineligible to participate in the Challenge.
| ratedgene wrote:
| yeah but wouldn't you want to create enough buzz globally so
| word of mouth can spread to more US entrants?
| safeimp wrote:
| I don't disagree with you at all, I'm just speculating over
| why they'd block it.
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| You can be a resident of the US and be on vacation for a
| couple weeks
| nemo44x wrote:
| Because the next thing you know the EU is suing you for
| billions of Euros.
| cddotdotslash wrote:
| Expect to see more of this, especially when the audience is
| local/US. IIRC, some newspapers are already doing region
| blocks. Why should website owners targeting US visitors spend
| _any_ amount of money making their content comply with
| asinine regulations (like cookie banners)?
| cinntaile wrote:
| Cookie banners are not a regulation requirement.
|
| Contrary to what you seem to believe...There were more
| geoblocks when the EU law went into action a couple of
| years ago. There are less now.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| EU cookie directive predates GDPR. Notices have long been
| required by that regulation for use of non-essential
| cookies.
| deathanatos wrote:
| "Doctor it hurts...", IANAL.
|
| I mean ... as I understand the Europeans' law, only if you're
| doing dumb things to begin with, like giving users' data away
| to random 3rd parties hellbent on shoving "ads" down one's
| throat. If you had just made this site a simple HTML page
| that just had the information the MTA wanted to convey on it,
| AIUI the EU doesn't have a problem.
|
| Which ... the MTA does appear to be, sending requests to
| Google, LinkedIn, and some other CDNs.
|
| I also don't think the MTA has any EU presence, so what are
| they going to do?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _as I understand the Europeans ' law, only if you're
| doing dumb things to begin with, like giving users' data
| away to random 3rd parties hellbent on shoving "ads" down
| one's throat_
|
| There is a massive difference between complying with the
| law and proving you comply. (Think: IRS audit.)
|
| > _don 't think the MTA has any EU presence, so what are
| they going to do?_
|
| Send letters. The MTA would be obligated to respond to
| them, which means legal bills.
| deathanatos wrote:
| > _There is a massive difference between complying with
| the law and proving you comply. (Think: IRS audit.)_
|
| > _The MTA would be obligated to respond to them, which
| means legal bills._
|
| ...why would the MTA be obligated to respond to them?
| They've no jurisdiction/sovereignty over an American
| transit agency.
|
| Why would they audit themselves against laws that don't
| apply to them? (Again, jurisdiction?) I've never worked
| for a company that audited itself against every law from
| every nation on Earth; we complied with the laws where we
| had a presence and did business.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| > ...AIUI the EU doesn't have a problem
|
| We're talking about a US transit agency. Even thinking
| about whether the EU has a problem with the agency's
| website is sort of absurd to begin with.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Did this US transit agency, MTA, obtain permission from
| all EU citizens who traveled on the MTA to share their
| data with the whole world?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Did this US transit agency, MTA, obtain permission
| from all EU citizens who traveled on the MTA_
|
| Not how jurisdiction works.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| Eh this conversation has nothing to do with people
| traveling on MTA services. We're talking about people
| accessing the MTA website. Two different things.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Why would you region block a webpage like this_
|
| As a part-time New York City taxpayer, I'd rather we not be
| paying EU lawyers to make sure the MTA's open data complies
| with European law.
| pc86 wrote:
| Good news, the EU doesn't have any jurisdiction in NYC (or
| anywhere else outside of the EU) so they don't have the
| ability to enforce anything outside of their borders, as much
| as they would like you to believe otherwise.
|
| You can enforce what people and companies do within your
| borders. You cannot enforce what companies or people outside
| of your borders do.
| kassner wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240927144204/https://new.mta.i...
|
| I can access it just fine from Sweden :shrug:
| sgtbr1 wrote:
| can someone share the data?
| manvillej wrote:
| what a tragedy, this person never learned how to read.
| leanthonyrn wrote:
| Intersting challenge. Here is the NotebookLM Audio: MTA's Open
| Data program
| https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/286a30b9-b17f-4dac-9e...
| rayrrr wrote:
| Hold my Metrocard.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Hold my bus transfer card.
| whitej125 wrote:
| 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.
| maxverse wrote:
| Also, considering they just got a 68 billion dollar budget
| approved [1] over the next 5 years, even a small monetary
| reward would be nice for this. It doesn't need to be a ton of
| money, but something other than "here's a piece of empty and
| memorabilia and we'll write a blog post" would be a good
| incentive
|
| [1] https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2024/09/25/mta-
| board-a...
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Why would a cost center political institution enumerate all its
| problems? It is kind of miraculous they can engage with the
| public this way at all.
| chaps wrote:
| 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.
| kalendos wrote:
| I can only imagine. Many ETLs are already messy in companies
| with better tooling and processes.
|
| Would love to read more about your experience with Open Data.
| Any place where I can reach out?
| chaps wrote:
| Here's something about shotspotter data in Chicago:
| https://x.com/foiachap/status/1775296597850480663
|
| And this one makes some rounds: https://mchap.io/that-time-
| the-city-of-seattle-accidentally-...
|
| Feel free to reach out!
| thecosas wrote:
| 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
| krebby wrote:
| 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...
| nocman wrote:
| 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.
| slt2021 wrote:
| 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
| WUMBOWUMBO wrote:
| perhaps this could be covered in a FOIA request
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-09-27 23:00 UTC)