Its the greatest city in the world, and they have no power over their transit system. At least if it were publicly owned and operated we could hold the Mayor accountable for its lack of performance, but unfortunately when MTA drops the ball all that happens is fares go up and Albany uses your tax dollars to subsidize their mismanagement.

Its sick.

I say nationalize them. At some point you have to say enough is enough and it cant get any worse.

But one thing to note – you keep mentioning Mayor Bloomberg’s Big Apps program. However, the MTA is a NY State agency, not a New York City agency. So Mayor Bloomberg’s initiative to put all public CITY data online doesn’t really apply here. While it’s a nice model to follow, the MTA doesn’t fall into his jurisdiction (except for the fact that he controls 4 of the Board members).

A year later, the money would have run out, and the committee disbanded with an inconclusive result.

Fact is though, MTA is a big old company. They have big old company mentality. Sending a CD with schedules on it, or even providing the schedules on an FTP server is really a silly process here in 2009. They have should have an API for you to grab data from and notify subscribers when there are updates.

I won’t catch your interview on TV, but I hope it spreads awareness of this nonsense.