Mapping Boston Bus Speed

This Leaflet powered map visualizes Boston bus speeds over the last three hours. The map uses the real-time GPS data from MBTA buses to plot the routes and speeds of the city's buses.

The MBTA Bus Speeds map actually takes the discreet location reports provided by the MBTA, which are sent at regular intervals. Therefore the map works out the speeds based on the time taken to travel between consecutive GPS signals.

The map includes two views. One view shows the last three hours of data. The other view shows the full 24 hours from yesterday. When comparing the two they do seem very similar. Which makes sense as you would expect faster and slower sections of roads to be fairly consistent.

However the 'about' section for the map says that there are actually noticeable differences in the speed patterns during the day and on different days of the week. For example, there are different speed patterns at rush hour than at other times of the day and different routes appearing at weekends than on weekdays.