Request for Information: Shaping the Future of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics

MetroPlan Orlando, a metropolitan planning organization, supports the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) in developing a nationally consistent, privacy-protected mobility-data foundation. They advocate for specific improvements in data types (such as origin-destination, multimodal, and freight data), technical accessibility (APIs, GIS-ready formats), and the establishment of a metropolitan planning data-user group.

INRIX, a private company, supports the Bureau of Transportation Statistics' (BTS) efforts to modernize its data products and suggests incorporating high-frequency, probe-based data to reduce latency. They recommend improving data accessibility through RESTful APIs, machine-readable metadata, and cloud-hosted data lakes to better serve both technical analysts and decision-makers.

The commenter, submitting on their own behalf, recommends that the Bureau of Transportation Statistics explore including linked trip counts and inter-agency transfer data in the National Transit Database (NTD). They argue that current unlinked passenger trip (UPT) data can be misleading and that including linked trips would better reflect actual transit consumption and trends.

The commenter, submitting on their own behalf, advocates for the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to collect and include temporally disaggregated transit use and supply data (by day of the week and time of day) in the National Transit Database (NTD). They argue that current data gaps hinder research on ridership trends and suggest that automated data collection systems make this feasible for operators.

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) supports the RFI and provides detailed feedback on improving the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) data portfolio. They advocate for clearer methodological documentation, more granular and timely data on supply chain resiliency and maritime commerce, and modernized delivery methods like RESTful APIs.

The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) supports the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) Request for Information, providing specific recommendations on data modernization. They advocate for a centralized multistate construction database, improved metadata consistency, AI-enhanced search tools, and the provision of raw, analysis-ready data formats like Parquet and CSV.

Jason Suguna Kumar, an ERP consultant and systems architect, supports the modernization of Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) data to better serve enterprise systems. He argues that BTS should provide higher-frequency data products, RESTful API endpoints, and standardized metadata schemas to enable real-time operational planning and AI-driven analytics in supply chain and transit management.

Dr. Marin Kress, a Research Physical Scientist at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, supports the Bureau of Transportation Statistics' efforts to improve its data portfolio. The commenter suggests expanding data on multimodal freight movements, improving technical documentation, and providing more diverse delivery mechanisms like CSV downloads and APIs to support infrastructure investment and supply chain modeling.

Timothy Benedict, a retired logistics executive, argues that the Freight Analysis Framework (FAF) fails to distinguish between marine drayage and transloaded international freight, leading to inaccurate data for emissions modeling and infrastructure planning. He proposes four remediation options ranging from simple documentation updates to more complex data integration to improve the accuracy of the FAF dataset.

David Schneider, founder of Schneider Analytics, LLC, recommends that the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) establish a National Active Transportation Infrastructure Atlas as part of the National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD). He argues that current data on walking, biking, and micromobility is fragmented and insufficient, and that a standardized national dataset would help address critical issues regarding pedestrian safety, public health, and transit accessibility.