Short-term traffic speed prediction is one of the most critical components of an intelligent transportation system ITS. The accurate and real-time prediction of traffic speeds can support travellers' route choices and traffic guidance/control. In this article, a support vector machine model single-step prediction model composed of spatial and temporal parameters is proposed. Furthermore, a short-term traffic speed prediction model is developed based on the single-step prediction model. To test the accuracy of the proposed short-term traffic speed prediction model, its application is illustrated using GPS data from taxis in Foshan city, China. The results indicate that the error of the short-term traffic speed prediction varies from 3.31% to 15.35%. The support vector machine model with spatial-temporal parameters exhibits good performance compared with an artificial neural network, a k-nearest neighbor model, a historical data-based model, and a moving average data-based model.