NYC MTA Bus Segment Speeds and Travel Times by Route and Hour

New York City's MTA bus system performance data from 2023-2024 provides average speeds and travel times between consecutive timepoints for every bus route. The dataset aggregates millions of bus trips by month, day of week, and hour of day, and includes route type, borough, and stop coordinates. It is published by data.ny.gov and was last updated in November 2025.

Use Cases

• Predict Average Travel Time for a Route ID and Hour of Day using features like Borough, Route Type, and Road Distance.
• Identify traffic bottlenecks by analyzing low Average Road Speed between specific Timepoint Stop Name and Next Timepoint Stop Name pairs.
• Cluster bus routes by performance patterns using features like Average Road Speed, Bus Trip Count, and Day of Week.
• Model the impact of Route Type (Local, Limited, SBS, Express) on Average Road Speed during different Hours of Day.

Strengths

• Data covers the entire MTA bus system for a multi-year period (2023-2024).
• Includes 24 columns with granular temporal (Hour of Day, Day of Week, Month) and spatial (Borough, coordinates) dimensions.
• Provides calculated performance metrics like Average Road Speed and Average Travel Time between specific stops.

Limitations

• Unknown total row count and sample size limits statistical confidence.
• Data is aggregated (e.g., monthly, hourly averages), losing individual trip-level granularity.
• Potential geographic bias as it only covers New York City.

Provenance

Source

data.ny.gov, likely sourced from New York City Transit (NYCT).

Collection Method

Aggregated from automated bus tracking systems, calculating averages from trip data.

Time Range

2023 to 2024.

Freshness

Data is updated periodically, with a recent metadata update in November 2025.

Geography

New York City, specifically the five boroughs served by MTA buses.