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U. S. Department of Transportation

Research and Innovative Technology Administration

Bureau of Transportation Statistics

Overview of Transportation for the Nation (TFTN) Based on TFTN Strategic Plan Findings to Date

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Conceptual Overview:

The Transportation for the Nation (TFTN) concept involves the creation and maintenance of high-quality,

nationwide transportation data that is in the public domain, and thus readily shareable across all sectors. While

TFTN is ultimately envisioned to include data on all modes of transportation – rail, ports, airport, transit – the

initial focus is on road centerline data which is the largest, and in some ways most complex transportation data

set. Key components of TFTN include:

Nationwide data that spans all states, territories and tribal lands

The inclusion of all roads, not just those funded by the federal government

Coordinated work across multiple levels of government (Federal, state, county/local) to create and

maintain TFTN

TFTN will provide a common geometric baseline, persistent segment ID numbering and road

naming that can be built on by other stakeholders to allow advanced capabilities such as routing,

linear referencing systems (LRS), expanded attribute data collection, and addressing/geocoding

Data will be in the public domain

Background:

The current TFTN initiative, and US-DOT’s involvement has evolved from, and been influenced by several

different efforts:

The National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC) developed an issues brief in 2008 that

called for the development of TFTN. This issues brief followed NSGIC advocacy for Imagery for the Nation

(IFTN) which continues.

The Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Circular A-16 as revised in 1990 and 2002 identifies the

US DOT as the “lead agency” for the “transportation theme” of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure

(NSDI). The US DOT sees TFTN as having the potential to help fulfill its responsibilities as lead agency.

TFTN has the potential to directly assist in meeting several US DOT business requirements that necessitate

a data inventory of all roads on a nationwide basis. These include accident reporting for enhanced safety,

highway performance monitoring, and bridge inventory.

The vision of TFTN is highly consistent with the current Administration’s emerging federal Geospatial

Platform concept. As such, TFTN could be considered one element of the “geospatial portfolio” that

provides common “geospatial data, services, and applications contributed…by authoritative sources” for

transportation (noting that Circular A-16 identifies US DOT as the lead for transportation).

How it might work:

The current US DOT sponsored TFTN strategic planning effort involves further detailing the TFTN concept and

developing a realistic model for how it might be implemented. The following represents current thinking on a

feasible and practical model:

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Current Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) “reporting requirements” for the Highway Performance

Monitoring System (HPMS) could be expanded to include the submission of a statewide road network that

includes all roads. The HPMS roads would then be identified as a subset from the statewide network. There

would be no expansion of the number of roads that require the collection of detailed HPMS data.

The expansion of reporting requirements would enable states to utilize some FHWA funding to meet this

requirement and the annual nature of reporting would provide a mechanism for keeping the roads data

current. The US DOT would work with State DOTs to develop basic standards that the states would need to

meet in fulfilling this reporting requirement. States would also be encouraged to work with neighboring

states to ensure good quality and network connectivity across shared state borders.

States would be able to develop their own plans and data management strategies for managing statewide road

networks, and indeed, several states already have comprehensive statewide road inventories in place. For

states that need support in meeting these new requirements, the US DOT (beginning with the TFTN Strategic

Plan) will identify state “best practices” for creating and maintaining statewide roads data. Currently

identified best practices include:

o States providing funding and/or technical support to county and local governments that perform the

original mapping which is then collected and aggregated by the states.

o States entering into public-private partnerships with commercial road data providers to create and

maintain detailed state road inventories

Once the road inventory is reported via HPMS, the US DOT will aggregate statewide inventories into a

seamless and consistent nationwide data set.

The US DOT will publish, at least an annual version of the nationwide public data, potentially through the

Geospatial Platform and Data.Gov.

The Benefits of TFTN:

An overarching benefit to TFTN is the fact that one set of investments originating from US DOT business needs

would lead to secondary benefits to other stakeholders and consumers of transportation data. It is anticipated

that benefits will accrue to at least three distinct sets of stakeholders:

1. Directly to the US-DOT:

o To the HPMS program enabling their planning and review of Federal Aid/National Highway Systems

(NHS) roadways to be seen within the context of complete transportation data. For example, “detour

planning” for major roadway reconstruction requires non-NHS roads.

o To the Highway Safety program which includes accident mapping on all roadways.

o To Bridge inventory efforts since bridges are tracked on all roadways.

2. To Federal Agencies:

o Reduces costs from current requirements to license commercial data in the absence of public data.

o Provides a public domain data set for data exchange with partners and distribution to the public.

o Potential collaboration and synergy with other significant mapping programs within US Census (i.e.,

TIGER) and USGS (i.e., The National Map) that involve roads and transportation.

o Assists US DOT in fulfilling Circular A-16, and potentially Geospatial Platform responsibilities that are

designed for federal government-wide efficiency.

3. To the NSGIC/State, Regional and Local Government Communities and the General Public

o Is consistent with NSGIC’s geospatial data philosophy of “build once, use many times.”

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o Potentially opens up FHWA resources to be used for the construction and maintenance of high-quality

statewide road inventories.

o Clarifies standards and best practices for the construction and maintenance of statewide road inventories.

o Provides public domain data with allowable data exchange between partners. This overcomes

challenges where both HPMS and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) (through their

nationwide broadband mapping program) have encountered situations where state data that was built on

top of commercial products could not be shared with the federal government due to license restrictions.

o Provides improved, current and publicly available transportation data – potentially via Data.gov – that

can be incorporated into a wide variety of web-sites and commercial products. Due to the prevalence of

Global Positioning System (GPS)-based navigation for personal and business uses, improved data,

particularly for rural parts of the country, has the potential for streamlining public route finding and the

flow of goods and services across the country.