🚇 MBTA Live Transit Scraper

🚀 Export Boston's live transit feed in seconds. Routes, stops, real-time vehicle positions, next-arrival predictions, and service alerts across the entire MBTA network. No sign-up, no manual GTFS wrangling.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-15 · 📊 Up to 60 fields per record · 🚇 5 transit modes · 🚉 200+ routes · 8,000+ stops · 🟢 Live every minute

The MBTA Live Transit Scraper exports the official Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority live feed and returns up to 60 transit fields per record, depending on whether you fetch routes, stops, vehicles, predictions, or alerts. The MBTA feed is the canonical reference for Boston public transit and powers Google Maps, Transit App, the official MBTA app, and dozens of academic mobility studies.

The catalogue covers the Red, Orange, Blue, Green, and Mattapan rapid-transit lines, the Silver Line BRT, every commuter-rail line, hundreds of bus routes, and harbor ferry service across more than 8,000 stops. This Actor makes the live feed downloadable as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML in under a minute. Filtering by route, stop, transit mode, and direction runs server-side.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Boston transit-app developers, mobility researchers, urban-planning teams, real-estate platforms, journalism teams, GTFS data engineers	Real-time vehicle dashboards, arrival-prediction widgets, accessibility audits, alerts pipelines, transit-equity research, GTFS validation

---

📋 What the MBTA Live Transit Scraper does

Five data modes in a single Actor:

• 🛤️ Routes. All 200+ routes across heavy rail, light rail, commuter rail, bus, and ferry, with colors, headsigns, and route types.
• 🚉 Stops. 8,000+ stops including platform names, lat/lon, wheelchair-boarding flags, and physical address.
• 🚍 Vehicles. Live positions for every vehicle in revenue service, with bearing, speed, occupancy, and current stop.
• 🕒 Predictions. Next-arrival predictions per stop with arrival/departure times, headsign, schedule relationship, and uncertainty.
• ⚠️ Alerts. Active disruptions, planned closures, severity, cause, effect, and the affected route/stop entities.

Filter every mode by route IDs, stop IDs, transit mode (heavy rail, light rail, commuter rail, bus, ferry), and direction.

💡 Why it matters: MBTA serves more than 1 million weekday riders. Real-time transit data powers commuter apps, accessibility studies, and journalism on service equity. Building your own pipeline means parsing GTFS-Realtime protobufs, joining static GTFS, and handling alerts. This Actor skips all of that.

---

🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing live Red Line vehicle positions exported to Sheets.

---

⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan at 1,000,000.
mode	string	"routes"	One of routes, stops, vehicles, predictions, alerts.
routeFilter	string	""	Comma-separated route IDs (e.g. "Red,Orange,Green-B,1,77").
stopFilter	string	""	Comma-separated stop IDs (e.g. "place-pktrm,70061") for predictions and alerts.
transitMode	string	"all"	Restrict to light-rail, heavy-rail, commuter-rail, bus, or ferry.
directionId	string	"any"	Travel direction filter for predictions and vehicles.

Example: live Red Line vehicle positions.

{
    "maxItems": 50,
    "mode": "vehicles",
    "routeFilter": "Red"
}

Example: next arrivals at Park Street station.

{
    "maxItems": 20,
    "mode": "predictions",
    "stopFilter": "place-pktrm"
}

⚠️ Good to Know: vehicle positions update roughly every 15 seconds; alerts can change at any time. The live MBTA feed treats heavy rail (1) as subway lines like Red/Orange/Blue and light rail (0) as Green Line and the Mattapan trolley.

---

📊 Output

Each record contains up to 60 fields depending on the mode you choose. Download as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema (representative subset by mode)

Field	Type	Where it appears	Example
🆔 id	string	all	"Red", "place-pktrm", "y1741"
📂 type	string	all	"route", "stop", "vehicle", "prediction", "alert"
🏷️ shortName	string	routes	"Red Line"
📌 longName	string	routes	"Red Line"
🎨 color	string	routes	"DA291C"
🔢 routeType	number	routes, stops	1
🏷️ routeTypeLabel	string	routes	"Heavy Rail"
📌 name	string	stops	"Park Street"
📍 latitude	number	stops, vehicles	42.356395
📍 longitude	number	stops, vehicles	-71.062424
♿ wheelchairBoarding	number	stops	1
🆔 vehicleId	string	vehicles	"y1741"
🧭 bearing	number	vehicles	120
📈 speed	number	vehicles	12.4
🚦 currentStatus	string	vehicles	"IN_TRANSIT_TO"
👥 occupancyStatus	string	vehicles	"FEW_SEATS_AVAILABLE"
🕒 arrivalTime	string	predictions	"2026-05-15T14:32:00-04:00"
📌 tripHeadsign	string	predictions	"Alewife"
📌 header	string	alerts	"Red Line shuttle service"
🔴 severity	number	alerts	7
📝 effect	string	alerts	"SHUTTLE"
📅 activePeriod	array	alerts	[{ "start": "...", "end": "..." }]
🕒 snapshotTime	ISO 8601	all	"2026-05-15T18:32:11.000Z"

📦 Sample records

---

✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
🚇	Five transit modes. Heavy rail, light rail, commuter rail, bus, and ferry across Greater Boston.
📡	Live every run. Vehicle positions, predictions, and alerts reflect the latest MBTA snapshot.
🎯	Five data modes. Routes, stops, vehicles, predictions, alerts, all from the same Actor.
🔍	Server-side filters. Route IDs, stop IDs, transit mode, and direction combine freely.
⚡	Fast. 200 vehicles or 200 predictions in under 10 seconds.
♿	Accessibility-ready. Wheelchair-boarding flags on every stop.
🚫	No sign-up. Works against the public MBTA live transit feed.

📊 The MBTA feed is the data layer behind every commuter app, accessibility audit, and journalistic investigation into Boston transit equity.

---

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ MBTA Live Transit Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	All MBTA modes	Live per run	route, stop, mode, direction	⚡ 2 min
Static GTFS downloads	Free	Schedules only	Weekly	None	🐢 Manual
GTFS-Realtime protobuf parsers	Free	Vehicles + predictions	Live	None	⏳ Hours
Commercial transit APIs	$99+/month	Multi-city	Live	Many	⏳ Integration

Pick this Actor when you want filtered, structured MBTA data without parsing protobufs or maintaining a GTFS pipeline.

---

🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the MBTA Live Transit Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Pick a mode (routes, stops, vehicles, predictions, alerts), add filters as needed.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor pull the live feed.
5. 📥 Download. Grab your results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to downloaded transit feed: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

---

💼 Business use cases

🚇 Transit Apps & Commuter Tools Build next-arrival widgets for stations and stops Show live vehicle positions on an interactive map Push service alerts to commuters via Slack or email Surface accessible-route options based on stop wheelchair flags	🏙️ Urban Planning & Mobility Research Audit MBTA service equity across neighborhoods Track on-time performance by route and stop Compare bus-corridor coverage to demographic layers Build transit-accessibility scores for housing analysis
🏠 Real Estate & PropTech Score listings by walking time to MBTA stops Highlight transit-accessibility on listing pages Power "near transit" filters in rental search Inform commercial-site selection with transit data	📰 Journalism & Civic Tech Investigate service-disruption patterns by route Quantify Green Line slow-zone impact Power city-council dashboards on transit equity Track compliance with accessibility commitments

---

🔌 Automating MBTA Live Transit Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically for scheduled runs and pipeline integrations:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor every minute, every hour, or daily. Real-time vehicle tracking pairs well with sub-minute refresh.

---

🌟 Beyond business use cases

Live transit data powers more than commercial workflows. The same structured records support research, education, civic projects, and personal initiatives.

🎓 Research and academia Mobility studies on MBTA service equity Replicate published transit-accessibility papers Teach geospatial analysis with real transit feeds Train ML models that predict arrival uncertainty	🎨 Personal and creative Build a personal commute dashboard for your daily route Visualize Red Line train movements as data art Power a Slack bot that alerts you to delays Create a hobbyist transit-history archive
🤝 Non-profit and civic Score MBTA accessibility for disability-rights advocacy Audit service equity across Boston neighborhoods Provide free transit data to community newsrooms Support civic dashboards on disruption frequency	🧪 Experimentation Train a delay-prediction model on hourly snapshots Validate transit-app UX with real-time data Prototype an accessibility-routing assistant Test smart-city dashboards with live MBTA feeds

---

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt about this ParseForge actor in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

---

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

Pick one of five data modes, optionally narrow by route, stop, transit mode, or direction, and run. The Actor pulls the official MBTA live feed and writes one clean record per route, stop, vehicle, prediction, or alert.

📏 How accurate is the data?

Data mirrors the official MBTA feed exactly. Vehicle positions update roughly every 15 seconds. Alerts can change at any time. Schedule relationships and cancellations are preserved.

🔁 How fresh are the predictions and vehicles?

Live. Each Actor run snapshots the current state, so back-to-back runs return updated vehicle positions, predictions, and alerts.

🚉 Which transit modes are covered?

All MBTA modes: heavy rail (Red, Orange, Blue), light rail (Green Line, Mattapan), commuter rail, bus, and harbor ferry.

🆔 What route IDs do I use for the filter?

Use MBTA route IDs such as Red, Orange, Blue, Green-B, Green-C, Green-D, Green-E, Mattapan, CR-Worcester, or any bus route number like 1, 57, 77.

⏰ Can I schedule regular runs?

Yes. Use Apify Schedules to refresh vehicles and predictions every minute, or alerts every 15 minutes.

⚖️ Is this data legal to use?

Yes. The MBTA publishes its live transit feed under permissive open-data terms. Attribution is encouraged.

💼 Can I use this data commercially?

Yes. The MBTA welcomes commercial use of its live data for transit apps, journalism, and analytics. Verify the latest terms in their data usage policy.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan to use this Actor?

No. The free Apify plan is enough for testing and small runs (10 records per run). A paid plan lifts the limit and unlocks scheduling.

♿ Are accessibility flags included?

Yes. Stop records include wheelchairBoarding values (0 = no info, 1 = accessible, 2 = not accessible). Alerts include accessibility-related effects when applicable.

🆘 What if I need help?

Our support team is here to help. Contact us through the Apify platform or use the Tally form linked below.

---

🔌 Integrate with any app

MBTA Live Transit Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Push alerts and predictions to channels
• Airbyte - Pipe transit data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits and releases
• Google Drive - Export datasets straight to Sheets

You can also use webhooks to trigger downstream actions when a run finishes. Push live alerts into your customer-support stack, or stream vehicle snapshots into a real-time dashboard.

---

🔗 Recommended Actors

• 🚦 TfL London Live Status Scraper - Live London transport status and disruptions
• 🗺️ OSRM Routing Scraper - Driving, cycling, and walking routes anywhere
• 🗺️ Nominatim OSM Scraper - Geocode addresses via OpenStreetMap
• ✈️ OurAirports Scraper - Global airport master data
• 🌍 Overpass OSM Scraper - Query arbitrary OpenStreetMap features

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more transit and geospatial scrapers.

---

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

---

⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority or any of its affiliates. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available open transit data is collected.