Carpocalypse Now : MTA Releases Granular Bus Speed Data Showing Need for Congestion Pricing

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has released a new data tool that breaks down city bus speeds by route segments, providing a more detailed understanding of congestion issues. This tool, posted online on Tuesday, allows advocates, reporters, data scientists, and the public to pinpoint specific areas where buses are experiencing delays. The data consists of bus stops, routes, longitudes, and specific times of the day. Jehiah Czebotar, a transit and safe streets activist, used this data to create an analysis tool that enables users to see how fast buses move along various segments of a route at different times and days. This information was previously aggregated, making it less granular. The release of this bus segment data is part of a larger MTA effort to make its data more accessible to the public. The agency is inviting anyone to tap into its open data sets and create insightful projects that shed light on how people navigate the city and region. The new tool highlights the congestion problem in Manhattan, where buses are consistently slow due to heavy traffic. The data shows that had Governor Hochul not paused congestion pricing on June 5, congestion in Manhattan could have been reduced by 17%. The MTA s route-level bus speed data will still be useful in demonstrating the ongoing traffic issues faced by buses. However, the full route tool has limitations, as it is impossible to know where buses are getting clogged up or what time of day speeds are good or bad beyond vague peak and off-peak designations. The MTA and city officials have already used the segmented data in public presentations, such as displaying how bus riders south of 60th Street were experiencing slow rides just before congestion pricing was supposed to begin. The MTA s open data challenge invites the public to create projects using the new data. The creator of the winning project will receive bragging rights and a vintage piece of swag from the New York City Transit Museum. In summary, the MTA s new data tool provides a more detailed understanding of bus congestion issues, allowing advocates and the public to pinpoint specific

Source: nyc.streetsblog.org
Published on 2024-09-25

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