> Those people get a lot of their cost information from the Internet.”

Do you know why researchers have to go to the ends of Earth to find cost information about the MTA? Because the MTA refuses to fucking disclose how they spend money, even though that money comes from taxpayers.

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/11/15/why-doesnt-the-mta-actually-tell-us-what-its-paying-for/

> “In New York, there are itemized costs prepared by independent cost estimators to inform the MTA when evaluating fixed-price bids, but … those costs are considered a trade secret of the agency, not to be publicized or else it would interfere with the bidding process,” researchers Eric Goldwyn, Alon Levy, Elif Ensari and Marco Chitti wrote in an upcoming report from the NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management.

I can go on Google for a random road construction project and find its itemized cost. How do I know? Because I just fucking did it - here’s an itemized invoice from Florida DOT for a road repaving and widening project in the middle of god damn nowhere

https://fdotwww.blob.core.windows.net/sitefinity/docs/default-source/programmanagement/estimates/documents/cost-per-mile-model-reports/rural/rural-23.pdf?sfvrsn=bd45a5ec_4

How much did it cost taxpayers to remove litter on the roadside for this project? $102. How is the MTA spending $120 million dollars for elevators at the Hunter College station? Who the fuck knows

This smug fuck Janno Lieber cautions that researchers do not have any first party sources when it comes to MTA costs yet his agency refuses to make those costs public.

I refuse to support another penny going to the MTA until they are fully transparent on how they spend their money.