The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics today released its winter 2023 update to the National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD), a set of nationwide geographic databases of transportation facilities, networks, and associated infrastructure.

One new layer has been added to the NTAD with this release, the USDOT Region layer for the Gateways of the Maritime Administration (MARAD).

The updated layers in this release include:

• Intermodal Passenger Connectivity Database;
• Bikeshare;
• Congressional Districts – Updated to 118th Congressional boundaries;
• Alternative Fueling Stations updated daily;
• Alternative Fuel Corridors;
• Nonattainment Areas;
• National Parks;
• Aviation Facilities updated monthly;
• Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs);
• Dams;
• National Transit Map Stops;
• National Transit Map Routes;
• National Transit Map Agencies;
• Marine Highways;
• Time Zones;
• Navigable Waterway Network Lines;
• Navigable Waterway Network Nodes;
• Docks;
• Principal Ports;
• Waterway Locks;
• North American Rail Network Lines;
• North American Rail Network Nodes;
• Railroad Grade Crossings;

The U.S. time zones span the entire country and its territories from the Atlantic time zone in the Caribbean to the Chamorro time zone in the Pacific. The ten longest U.S. scheduled domestic commercial flights between November 2022 and October 2023 were all 4,000 miles and longer, with the longest flight being Boston-Honolulu at 5,095 miles. Eight of the longest of these flights cross five U.S. time zones (not counting the origin time zone) with origin-destination pairs in the Hawaii-Aleutian and Eastern time zones. Travelers on these routes would experience five one hour shifts from the eastern zone at UTC -5:00 to the Hawaii-Aleutian at UTC -10:00. The ninth and tenth longest flights cross four time zones, spanning from the Central to the Hawaii-Aleutian zone. The graphic below shows these passenger plane routes across multiple time zones and their respective route lengths.

About the National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD)NTAD data is available for download in comma separated values (CSV), Keyhole Markup Language (KML), and shapefile formats through the BTS Geospatial Data Catalog. Additionally, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard Web Feature Services (WFS) and Web Mapping Services (WMS) are available for all NTAD datasets, here and here. Also available are optimized services for fast rendering of full NTAD datasets and vector tile services for 13 of the largest NTAD datasets. These faster services are designated in NTAD by service names ending in “DS” for each layer and “VT” for the vector tiles services.

BTS now uses a dynamic NTAD publication cycle, with updated data released throughout the year as they become available from their respective government agencies. Follow BTS on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram or subscribe to email updates for announcements of additional dataset releases throughout the year. 

Original source can be found here