Well the Westin POP and Netrality POPs model is the best in my opinion.
You take your bundle to one central location and do the x-connects there.
No need to pull single cables in the trays
Actually, as a reflection of the provider's cost, NRC for a cross-connect makes more sense than a recurring cost. After all, there's labor involved in setting up the cross-connect, but once it's in, it pretty much just sits there.
The fallacy here, though, is assuming that rational pricing bears some relation to the vendor's cost to provide the good or service. Actual price is based on what the market will bear. Sharing pricing information on NANOG likely helps consumers by increasing market transparency (which is why vendors love to block such sharing via NDA). Much as I sympathize with the sentiment, though, "ridiculous" is meaningless in this context. It may even be construed as positive, as in: "Awesome, we're making ridiculous profits on all these copper cross-connects." 
Jim