Bus speeds

From our research notes

Kept as written when the work was done, so figures and dates are from that run.

Started 2026-10-05.

Two sources

• The MTA publishes bus speeds on data.ny.gov, about a month after each month ends:
  • route speeds by month since 2019, peak and off-peak, weekday and weekend (cudb-vcni);
  • speeds by route, month and hour inside and outside the congestion pricing zone since 2023 (r6db-kkzj);
  • speeds between timepoint stops by route, hour and day of week since 2023 (kufs-yh3x, 58t6-89vi; ~10M rows, not downloaded yet).
• Our collector records every bus’s position about every 30 s. From it we get speeds for any day, hour or stretch of street, a day later rather than a month, and things the MTA doesn’t publish (bunching, how much speeds vary).

So history comes from the MTA, and our data fills the last month and adds detail.

Method (our data)

Each position is snapped to its trip’s route shape (MTA bus GTFS) to find how far along the route it is. Speed is distance covered between consecutive reports over the time between them, so time stopped at stops and lights counts, as in the MTA’s figures. Left out: reports within 150 m of either end of the route (layovers), more than 60 m off the route, gaps over 5 minutes, and moves implying over 56 mph or more than 30 m backwards (on loop routes a position can snap to the wrong part of the shape). Trips not in the schedule use their route’s usual shape.

Check against the MTA

Sunday 2026-10-04 (to 8 pm), against the MTA’s August 2026 weekend speeds, 262 routes with 20+ trips:

• citywide 8.66 mph vs the MTA’s 8.59;
• route speeds correlate at 0.96; median ratio 1.02; 91% of routes within 10%.

The biggest misses (B84, M57, Q90) are routes where one Sunday differs from an August average, or detours. Repeat on full weekdays once the MTA publishes October.

First look: the congestion pricing zone

Weekday 6 am–8 pm, MTA data, miles over hours across all routes:

	2023	2024	2025	2026 (Jan–Aug)
Local buses inside the zone	5.30	5.24	5.38	5.35
All buses inside the zone	9.42	9.34	9.52	9.41
All buses outside the zone	7.67	7.60	7.65	7.64

Local buses in the zone ran about 3% faster in 2025 than 2024, and 2026 has kept most of it. That’s small, and these figures mix routes whose service changed; a route-by-route comparison is next.