12 · Faster on Foot?
Every New York City bus route, hour by hour: where is the bus slower than a jogger, and when?
Each line is one stretch of a bus route, between two timing stops, coloured by how fast the buses on it really moved: the weekday average for each hour of the day in August 2026, measured by the MTA from the buses’ own GPS. Move the clock and watch the city slow down.
At 5 p.m. on a weekday, what share of New York’s bus route segments are slower than a jogger (10 km/h)? One in twenty? One in five? One in three?
The slowest stretches at this hour (tap one to find it on the map):
Data: Metropolitan Transportation Authority, MTA Bus Route Segment Speeds, data.ny.gov, August 2026, weekdays. Each segment is drawn as a straight line between its two timing stops; segments shorter than 200 m, and express stretches longer than 3 km, are left out of the map. Base map © OpenStreetMap contributors.
What it shows
A bus is a car that must stop: at stops, to let people on and off, and in the same traffic as everyone else. Its speed drops through the day as the streets fill, and the slowest stretches are where both happen at once: crowded stops on congested avenues. Two fixes that cities use are a bus lane (take the bus out of the traffic) and boarding at every door (shorten the stops). Compare an avenue with a bus lane to one without, at the same hour.
Data: Metropolitan Transportation Authority, MTA Bus Route Segment Speeds: Beginning 2025, data.ny.gov.