A K-nearest neighbor (K-NN) based nonparametric regression model was proposed to predict travel speed for Beijing expressway. By using the historical traffic data collected from the detectors in Beijing expressways, a specically designed database was developed via the processes including data filtering, wavelet analysis and clustering. The relativity based weighted Euclidean distance was used as the distance metric to identify the K groups of nearest data series. Then, a K-NN nonparametric regression model was built to predict the average travel speeds up to 6 min into the future. Several randomly selected travel speed data series,collected from the floating car data (FCD) system, were used to validate the model. The results indicate that using the FCD, the model can predict average travel speeds with an accuracy of above 90%, and hence is feasible and effective.