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🚇 MBTA Realtime Vehicles Scraper

🚀 Export real-time MBTA Boston bus, subway, and commuter rail vehicle positions straight from api-v3.mbta.com.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-06-05 · 📊 15 fields per record · Public REST API · No login required

The MBTA Realtime Vehicles Scraper turns the https://api-v3.mbta.com/vehicles public endpoint into a clean, structured dataset, parses the response, and flattens it into one row per record. You can scope the run with input filters and pull whichever subset you need.

📋 What the MBTA Realtime Vehicles Scraper does

• Calls the public https://api-v3.mbta.com/vehicles endpoint with the input filters you supply.
• Parses the response, locates each record, and flattens it into a row.
• Casts numeric fields and surfaces upstream errors as a single record with the error field populated.
• Stops cleanly at maxItems so you never blow past your dataset budget.
• Exports to every format the Apify dataset supports , spreadsheet, warehouse, RSS, HTML, and more.

💡 Why it matters: the upstream endpoint is public but the response is verbose and not analyst-ready. This actor normalizes it into one clean row per record so the data drops straight into BigQuery, a Google Sheet, or a pandas DataFrame.

🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon.

⚙️ Input

Example 1, default run:

{
"maxItems":10
}

Example 2, larger pull:

{
"maxItems":500
}

⚠️ Good to Know: all input is validated; trailing whitespace is trimmed before the request fires. Free accounts are capped at 10 items per run as a preview; upgrade for the full dataset.

📊 Output

Each record is a flat object. imageUrl is always first, error is always last.

Sample record:

{
"imageUrl":"example",
"vehicle_id":"example",
"label":"example",
"route":"example",
"trip":"example",
"status":"example",
"lat":0,
"lon":0,
"bearing":0,
"speed":0,
"current_stop":0,
"occupancy":"example",
"updated_at":"example",
"scrapedAt":"2026-06-05T12:00:00.000Z",
"error":null
}

✨ Why choose this Actor

| 🆓 | Works with the free Apify tier and the public upstream endpoint. | | 🧹 | Clean column names ready for BI tools, spreadsheets, and warehouses. | | 🔢 | Numeric strings auto-cast to real numbers when applicable. | | 🛟 | Surfaces upstream rate-limit and error notes as a clean error record instead of crashing. | | 🚦 | Respects maxItems for predictable run cost. | | 💾 | Push to dataset, instant export to every format the Apify dataset UI supports. |

📈 How it compares to alternatives

🚀 How to use

1. Click Try for free.
2. Pick your input filters (or leave defaults).
3. Click Start. Within seconds your dataset is ready, download or pipe to your warehouse.
4. (Optional) Schedule the actor to refresh automatically.

💼 Business use cases

📊 BI and reporting. Wire the actor to a scheduled run, push results to BigQuery or Postgres, and serve a live dashboard.

🤖 ML and feature engineering. Build a clean labelled dataset for training without writing client code or maintaining auth.

📰 Newsroom and research. Verify a fact, snapshot a public record, and embed structured tables in your story.

🧭 Operational monitoring. Track a public dataset over time, alert on changes, and feed downstream automation.

🔌 Automating MBTA Realtime Vehicles Scraper

• Make / Zapier: trigger this actor on a schedule, push results to Airtable, Google Sheets, or Slack.
• Cron schedule: native Apify scheduler, run hourly, daily, or weekly.
• Webhooks: get a POST to your endpoint the moment a run finishes.
• Pipe to BigQuery / Snowflake / Postgres: native Apify integrations move datasets straight into your warehouse.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

🎓 Education. Free, structured datasets for students learning data analysis or statistics.

🧪 Personal research. Track a topic you care about, build a personal data project, share it on GitHub.

🤝 Non-profit and open data. Power public dashboards and civic-tech projects without writing client code.

🧰 Tinkering and prototyping. Spin up a clean data feed in seconds to test a new chart library or app idea.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Pop this README into ChatGPT, Claude, or any AI assistant and ask it to map your specific workflow to the actor inputs. The schema, examples, and field list above contain everything an LLM needs to design a working pipeline.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

❓ Do I need an API key? No. The upstream endpoint is fully public.

❓ Is there a rate limit? The upstream endpoint may rate-limit. This actor surfaces any rate-limit notes as a clean error record.

❓ Which formats can I export? Every format the Apify dataset UI supports, including spreadsheet, warehouse, RSS, HTML, and feed formats.

❓ Can I schedule runs? Yes, use Apify native scheduler or hook this up to Make, Zapier, or cron.

❓ Is this scraping or API? API. The upstream endpoint is fully public, this actor just normalizes the response.

❓ Will the schema change? Core fields are stable. Source-specific fields are passed through as-is when present.

❓ How are errors handled? The actor never throws on the user. Upstream errors and rate-limit notes are pushed as a single record with error populated.

❓ Can I limit the run size? Yes. Set maxItems to cap the dataset; free accounts are auto-capped at 10.

❓ Does it work behind a proxy? Yes, the Apify platform handles outbound networking for you.

❓ Is the data deduplicated? Records are pushed as the upstream returns them; downstream deduping is up to you.

🔌 Integrate with any app

Apify ships native integrations with Make, Zapier, Slack, Discord, Google Drive, Google Sheets, Gmail, Airbyte, Keboola, Telegram, GitHub, and any REST API or webhook endpoint. Trigger runs from a calendar event, a form submission, a cron job, or pipe results straight into BigQuery, Snowflake, or a Postgres warehouse.

🔗 Recommended Actors

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for 900+ production-grade scrapers across business intelligence, real estate, e-commerce, sports, finance, and public records.

Disclaimer: This actor scrapes only publicly available data. ParseForge is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of the third-party services referenced. Users are responsible for complying with the target site terms of service and applicable law. Create a free account w/ $5 credit.