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, provides a research report from the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies regarding gaps in public transit ridership data. They argue for clearer labeling of "report years" in the National Transit Database (NTD) and suggest requiring agencies to report calendar year or standardized fiscal year totals to improve data comparability.

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 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.

The commenter, representing a business entity, praises the USACE's public APIs for their accuracy and ease of use. They argue that other government agencies should follow this model by providing data via APIs rather than just searchable databases to ensure high-quality data foundations for AI.

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. Robert Foss, representing the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Highway Safety Research Center, argues that the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and FHWA must address long-standing inaccuracies in driver license counts, particularly for teenagers. He recommends clarifying the definition of a "licensed driver" to exclude learner licenses and implementing a federal quality control system to ensure consistent and reasonable data reporting from states.