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  • About
    • About Us
    • News and Updates
    • Our Primary Resources in Action
    • Policies
  • Daily Headlines
  • LA Transportation History
    • Past Visions: 1920s
    • Past Visions: 1930s
    • Past Visions: 1940s
    • Historic Traffic Plans: 1911-1957
    • Archive
      • Online Archive of California
      • Search Digitized Material
        • Search California Highways and Public Works Magazine: 1924-1967
        • Search CEO Briefs & Every Voice Counts 2005-present
        • Search Electric Railway Journal 1884-1931
        • Search Employee News Magazines: 1918-2009
        • Search Metro Library’s Digitized Documents
        • Search Metro’s Board Records 1993-2015 and its Predecessors Meeting Minutes 1951-1993
        • Search Metro Board Correspondence/Board Box 1993-present
        • Search Los Angeles Metro Press Releases 1993 – Present
  • Resources to Know
    • Start Here: An Approach to Transportation Research
    • Transportation Data and Related Resources
    • Databases and eBooks
    • Environmental Studies
    • Metro Library Knowledge Hub
    • Search the Library Catalog
Resources and research support

Transportation Data and Related Resources

This guide provides an introduction to numerous transportation-specific datasets available for download and use in your educational, professional, and general resource projects. If you’re a Metro employee looking for additional support with data management, data curation, or data preservation, please reach out to library@metro.net for one-on-one support.

General Datasets

Use the following resources to get an overview of the data being gathered locally, at the agency and city level, as well as nationally on the federal level and through select non-profits and agencies outside of California.

Federal datasets

City, county, statewide, and internal datasets

Non-profit, industry, and other datasets

Federal datasets

US Census Bureau

  • American Community Survey (ACS) Data
  • Census Data — 2020 Census Data, APIs, Data Tools, etc.
  • Interactive Maps using Census Data
  • Commuting Data (former Journey to Work) via US Census
 

US Department of Transportation, National Transportation Library

  • Bureau of Transportation Statistics: A-Z Index
  • Bureau of Transportation Statistics: Vehicle Inventory and Use Survey (VIUS) — Recently updated with 2021 survey results.
  • Statistical Products and Data
  • Repository and Open Science Access Portal: National Transportation Data Archive
  • Freight Data Dictionary
  • Research Data Management Resource Guide
 

US Department of Transportation, Federal Transit Administration

  • National Transit Database (NTD)
  • NTD Annual Data Publications Guide
  • NTD Annual National Transit Summaries and Trends
  • NTD Census Updates
  • NTD Glossary

 

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Transportation Review Board

  • Indexed Dataset

City, county, statewide, and internal datasets

Los Angeles Resources: LACMTA (Metro)

  • Metro Bike Share Data
  • Metro Data – developer.metro.net
  • City of Los Angeles Data
  • Los Angeles County Data – By Department
  • State of California Data

 

San Francisco Resources: BART, SFMTA (SF MUNI), AC Transit

  • BART Developer Program, links to many BART resources, one of the public transit agencies in San Francisco, for developers including an API, realtime GTFS, and geospatial data.
  • SFMTA GTFS Transit Data
  • AC Transit Data Resource Center, a collection of AC Transit’s data resources including an API, GTFS, and geospatial data.
  • Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Vital Signs, a data dashboard (with APIs) of a number of different performance indicators for the transportation and land use activity of the Bay Area.

 

Caltrans

  • Caltrans GIS Data Portal
  • Caltrans Performance Measurement System (PeMS)
  • Caltrans Traffic Census Program

 

South Coast Air Quality Monitoring District (South Coast AQMD)

  • South Coast AQMD GIS Open Data Portal
  • Air Quality (AQ) Details — Historical Data

 

Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG)

  • SCAG Data Tools
  • SCAG ArcGIS Open Data

 

Transportation Lifecycle Assessment

  • Passenger Transportation Data
  • Freight Transportation Data
  • Urban Emissions Modeling (Select Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County, CA)

Non-profit, industry, and other datasets

Texas A&M Transportation Institute: Mobility Division

  • National Congestion Data
  • Additional Data and Trends

TransitCenter

  • TransitCenter Equity Dashboard, Tracking Equitable Transportation Access in US Cities

Additional Datasets, by Subject

Many of the datasets below were pulled from a resource guide created by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies Library. Please visit their website to see additional resources, especially if you’re interested in topics related to Northern California and the Bay Area.

Planning

Transit

Highways

Aviation

Freight

Energy

Safety

Crime

Planning

U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration

 
  • Census Transportation Planning Products, the CTPP is a set of special tabulations designed by transportation planners using large sample surveys conducted by the Census Bureau. From 1970 to 2000, the CTPP and its predecessor, UTPP, used data from the decennial census long form. The decennial census long form has now been replaced with a continuous survey called the American Community Survey (ACS). Therefore, the CTPP now uses the ACS sample for the special tabulation.

  • National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), the 2009 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) provides information to assist transportation planners and policy makers who need comprehensive data on travel and transportation patterns in the United States. The 2009 NHTS updates information gathered in the 2001 NHTS and in prior Nationwide Personal Transportation Surveys (NPTS) conducted in 1969, 1977, 1983, 1990, and 1995.

Transit

U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Transit Administration

 
  • National Transit Database (NTD), a repository of US transit agency data and statistics. It includes transit profiles, time series data on transit systems and safety, and ridership data.

 

Other

  • TransitLand, a community supported data service that aggregates a number of different transit data feeds, such as agency GTFS feeds.
  • TransitFeeds, an extensive archive of public transit data for software developers, transit agencies and more. Browse and download official GTFS & GTFS-realtime feeds from around the world.
  • Transit Wiki – Publicly Accessible Transit Data, a collection of links to accessible public transportation data feeds.

    Highways

    U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration

    • Highway Statistics Series, consists of annual reports containing analyzed statistical information on motor fuel, motor vehicle registrations, driver licenses, highway user taxation, highway mileage, travel, and highway finance.
    • Traffic Volume Trends, a monthly report based on hourly traffic count data reported by the States. These data are collected at approximately 4,000 continuous traffic counting locations nationwide and are used to estimate the percent change in traffic for the current month compared with the same month in the previous year. Estimates are re-adjusted annually to match the vehicle miles of travel from the Highway Performance Monitoring System and are continually updated with additional data.

     

    California Department of Transportation

    • PeMS Data Source from Caltrans, PeMS is also an Archived Data User Service (ADUS) that provides over ten years of data for historical analysis.
    • Traffic Census Program, Provides traffic count information for city and county streets as well as state highways. Data sources include annual average daily traffic (AADT) reports, ramp volumes, and peak hour volume data reports.
    • Life-Cycle Benefit-Cost Analysis Model, The Economic Analysis Branch routinely conducts life-cycle benefit/cost analysis for proposed state highway and public transit projects. Such analysis is performed using Cal-B/C, a PC-based spreadsheet model developed by the Branch and outside consultants. Cal-B/C can be used to analyze many types of highway construction and operational improvement projects, as well as some Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) and transit projects.

    Texas Transportation Institute

    • Congestion Data for Your City, Urban Mobility and Congestion Statistics—congestion index, travel delay, fuel consumption, congestion cost—for every city included in the study.

    Aviation

    U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics

    • TranStats: Aviation, a collection of aviation statistical reports from BTS.

     

    Federal Aviation Administration

    • Federal Aviation Administration Data & Research, the FAA conducts research to ensure that commercial and general aviation is the safest in the world. Below you will find information about how the research is done, the resulting data and statistics, and information on funding and grant data.

     

      Statista

      • Statista – Aviation, a collection of aviation statists on the Statista platform.

      Freight

      Local and national resources on freight and goods movement, coming soon!

      Energy

      International Energy Agency (IEA)

      • IEA Data Sets, includes emissions data and energy prices from around the globe.

       

      U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration

      • Annual Energy Review, the EIA’s Monthly Energy Review (MER) to includes annual data as far back as 1949 for those data tables that are found in both the Annual Energy Review (AER) and the MER. In the list of tables below, grayed-out table numbers now go to MER tables that contain 1949-2012 (and later) data series.

       

      Environmental Protection Agency

      • EPA Fuel Economy Data, fuel economy data are the result of vehicle testing done at the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and by vehicle manufacturers with oversight by EPA.

       

      Oak Ridge National Lab

      • Transportation Data Energy Book, TEDB is a compendium of data on transportation with an emphasis on energy.

        Safety

        U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics

        • TranStats: Safety, a collection of databases surrounding different areas of transportation safety. Includes aviation, hazardous materials, motor vehicles, and other modes.

         

        U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration

        • Highway Safety Information System (HSIS), HSIS is a roadway-based system that provides quality data on a large number of crash, roadway, and traffic variables. It uses data already being collected by States for managing the highway system and studying highway safety. The data are acquired annually from a select group of States, processed into a common computer format, documented, and prepared for analysis. Data are available to requestors in multiple formats including comma-separated values (.csv), Microsoft Excel, SAS, and GIS shape files.

         

        U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

        • Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), contains information about crashes and fatalities on the American Highway System.

         

        California Highway Patrol

        • Statewide Integrated Traffic Record System (SWITRS), a database that serves as a means to collect and process data gathered from a collision scene. The Internet SWITRS application is a tool by which California Highway Patrol (CHP) staff and members of its Allied Agencies throughout California can request various types of statistical reports in an electronic format. Custom reports can be created by the user to capture data relevant to specified criteria such as Jurisdiction, Location, or Annual or Quarterly reports by date.

        Crime

        Crime data and related resources from Metro and our predecessor agencies, coming soon!

        STILL NEED SUPPORT?

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        • Last Updated August 7, 2024

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