National Transportation Atlas Databases -- 1999



National Transportation Atlas Databases-2001

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics

The Mission—To lead in developing transportation data and information of high quality and to advance their effective use in public and private transportation decisionmaking.

The Vision—Data and information of high quality supporting every significant transportation policy decision, thus advancing the quality of life and the economic well-being of all Americans.

Description

The National Transportation Atlas Databases-2001 (NTAD-2001) is a set of national geographic databases of transportation facilities. These databases include geospatial information for transportation modal networks and intermodal terminals and related attribute information. Included are descriptions of the file formats and database metadata as prescribed by the Federal Geographic Data Committee. The data on this compact disc (CD-ROM) support research, analysis, and decisionmaking across all modes of transportation. The databases are most useful at the national level, but have major applications at regional, state, and local scale throughout the transportation community.

These databases do not provide explicit connections between modal networks and terminals. BTS plans to enhance future releases to provide intermodal connectivity, additional attributes, and passenger and commodity flow information.

Format

This year, based on requests from our spatial data users and our continuing effort to make the data useful to the greatest number of people possible, we are distributing the NTAD in shapefile format. The shapefile is an open format created by the Environmental Systems Research Institute’s (ESRI). You can find additional information about the format at: library/whitepapers/pdfs/shapefile.pdf.

Design

The databases are designed for use within a Geographic Information System (GIS). However, attribute data can be accessed in any database, spreadsheet, or other software package. This information is stored in dBASE format.

Compiled

The databases were compiled from many parts of the USDOT and other federal government agencies. The contributors are responsible for the accuracy of the original data. BTS will perform structured quality evaluations on the transportation databases as they are incorporated into research and analysis projects. User comments are critical to improved future releases as your evaluations and corrections will be incorporated into subsequent datasets. Users should check the BTS World Wide Web site (gis/) for corrections and addendum.

Contents

The NTAD-2001 CD-ROM is organized into a series of subdirectories, one for each feature type (point, polyline, and polygon) and one for each database.

The transportation networks are polyline databases. Transportation terminals exist as point databases. The geographic reference files exist as all three types: point, polyline, and polygon databases.

Metadata documentation describing source, responsible agency, file formats, and any additional discussion regarding the use of the dataset, is in the .met ASCII text file in each subdirectory. The user can view and/or print these files using any standard word processing software package. Additionally, the metadata is available in hypertext markup language (html) format. These files appear in each subdirectory as follows:

.met metadata for the database

.htm metadata in hypertext markup language format

Each dataset whether it is a point, polyline or polygon is composed of three different files: a main file, an index file, and a dBASE table. The shapefile format is a simple, non-topological format for storing the geometric location and attribute information of geographic features. The shapefile format defines the geometry and attributes of geographically referenced features in three files with specific file extensions. They are:

.shp the file that stores the feature geometry.

.shx the file that stores the index of the feature geometry.

.dbf the dBase file that stores the attribute information of features.

For further information concerning the definition of SHAPE, consult ESRI documentation.

All data included on this CD-ROM is in Shapefile format. Metadata and other supporting documentation are in ASCII text and htm format. A listing of the subdirectory names and a brief description of the information in each subdirectory are shown below.

Point

AIRPORT Public Use Airports--Landing facilities in the United States, 2000.

AMTK_STA Amtrak stations/railway terminals, 2000.

PLACE90 Place Name Point File--Place locations from the 1990 Census Master

Area Reference File.

PORT U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Ports, extracted from the Waterway

Network, 2000.

TERMINAL Intermodal Terminals, 1998.

Polyline

NHPNV3 National Highway Planning Network, Version 3.0 (1:100,000 base scale). Data provided and maintained by the Federal Highway Administration

(FHWA), 1999.

RAIL100K Railway Network (1:100,000 base scale). Data provided and maintained by the Federal Railroad Administration, 2000.

RAIL2M Railway Network (1:2,000,000 base scale). Data provided and maintained

by the Federal Railroad Administration, 2000.

RUNWAY Runways associated with the Public Use Airports, 1998.

TRANSIT Fixed Guideway Transit Network plus High Occupancy Vehicle Roadways, 1997.

WATERWAY U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Navigable Waterway Network, version

2.1, 2000.

Polygon

BEA Bureau of Economic Analysis, economic areas.

BOC_UZA Bureau of the Census Urbanized Areas (1:100,000 base scale). Data

provided and maintained by the Census Bureau, 1998.

COUNTY U.S. counties with integrated shoreline (1:100,000 base scale).

CD106 The 106th Congressional Districts (1:100,000 base scale).

FHWA_UZA Federally Adjusted Urbanized Areas (1:100,000 base scale). Data provided and maintained by the Federal Highway Administration, 1995.

MILBASE Military Base Boundaries (1:100,000 base scale). Data provided by the

Military Traffic Management Command.

MSA Metropolitan Statistical Areas (1:100,000 base scale), 1992.

NTAR National Transportation Analysis Regions, 1995.

PARK National Parks (variable base scale) compiled by the National Park

Service.

STATE U.S. boundaries with integrated shoreline (1:100,000 base scale).

Technical Support

For assistance using this CD-ROM or the data on it, contact the Bureau of Transportation

Statistics at (202) 366-DATA and refer to the NTAD-2001 or via e-mail at answers@.

For assistance with importing the data into a geographic information system software package, please contact technical support for the specific vendor.

Customer/Vendor Supplied Translation Software and Alternate Data Format

BTS will continue to distribute these data in the BTS ASCII format from the BTS web site. If you decide to utilize this format you will need to use translation or conversion programs/software in order for the data to be compatible with the GIS package of your choice.

BTS has developed data conversion software for use with the NTAD ASCII format files. The software can be downloaded from the following BTS website: . The data conversion software reads the NTAD format and converts it for use into several common GIS formats: ArcView, ARC/INFO generate, Caliper (TransCAD/GISPlus/Maptitude), Intergraph, Landview, and MapInfo. It converts only the base NTAD files. The attribute files must be linked separately using the GIS. Refer to the metadata for each database to determine the key field that links the attributes.

BTS encourages its customers, as well as GIS vendors, to contact us if they have created other translation routines for the NTAD. Currently, BTS has received conversion routines for GRASS, ARC/INFO and GeoMedia and all can be found at: . We will provide information regarding these routines on the BTS Internet site (gis/).

Acknowledgments

The NTAD-2001 CD-ROM is the result of cooperation throughout the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Roger Petzold and Mike Neathery of the Federal Highway Administration; Raphael Kedar, Carl Fischer, and Peter Kerr of the Federal Railroad Administration; Tom Jernigan of the Military Traffic Management Command TEA; William Wiggins of the Federal Transit Administration; and David Pennick of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contributed data without which this project could not have been completed.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the Office of Airline Information provided invaluable data for the airport and runway data sets.

Many of the polygon geographic datasets are products derived from the TIGER database or TIGER/Line files created and maintained by the U.S. Bureau of the Census.

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