BTS National Transportation Atlas

Live

US transportation infrastructure — rail networks (~302K segments), 175 principal ports with vessel calls and tonnage, ~196 navigation locks, ~19.4K FAA airports, and intermodal terminals (pipeline / liquid bulk / rail / RoRo) from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics National Transportation Atlas Database.

What is BTS National Transportation Atlas?

Bureau of Transportation Statistics National Transportation Atlas Database — curated infrastructure layers relevant to crude-by-rail, supply-chain, and industrial logistics. Covers the North American Rail Network (~302K segments with Class I owners BNSF / UP / CSXT / NS / CN / CPKC, passenger flag, division, subdivision, branch, miles), DIPT 2020 principal ports (175 ports with vessel-call frequency and gross tonnage by Atlantic / Gulf / Pacific / Great Lakes / Inland coast region), the National Inventory of Dams subset that contains navigation locks (~196 lock-bearing dams default; full ~92K is also queryable), FAA aviation facilities (~19.4K — airports / heliports / seaplane bases by site type, public/private use, FAA airport identifier), and intermodal freight facilities split by terminal type — pipeline terminals (~1.4K with Y/N/NA flags for crude oil / refined / NGL / gasoline / distillate / biodiesel / jet fuel / ethanol), liquid bulk facilities (~640 polygons with capacity in barrels), rail TOFC/COFC terminals (~241), and marine roll-on/roll-off (~84). All searches accept bbox spatial filters; results are returned in WGS84. Tenant exposes 999+ services; this connector intentionally curates to the 8 layers most relevant for industrial transportation analysis.

Available Tools

searchRailLines
North American rail network — filter by owner (RROWNER1: BNSF/UP/CSXT/NS/CN/CPKC), state, county FIPS, bbox, passenger flag.
searchPorts
DIPT principal ports (175) with vessel calls + gross tonnage by state, coast region, bbox.
searchLocksAndDams
Navigation lock-bearing dams from the NID (~196 default). Filter by state, owner type, bbox; pass withLocksOnly=false for all ~92K dams.
searchAirports
FAA aviation facilities (~19.4K). Filter by state, county, siteType (A/H/C/U/G/B), facilityUse (PU/PR), arptId.
searchIntermodalTerminals
Intermodal freight terminals — pass terminalType: pipeline / liquid-bulk / rail-tofc-cofc / marine-roro. crudeOnly + refinedOnly available for pipeline.
getServiceInfo
Schema, fields, and record counts for the 8 curated services.

Requirements

Toggle on
Toggle on and use — no setup needed.

Quick Setup Guide

Follow these steps to connect your AI agents to this connector

Open /mcp and turn on BTS National Transportation Atlas with the environmental switch — no credentials needed.

Call the bts-ntad MCP tool — start with method=searchRailLines, method=searchPorts, or method=getServiceInfo.

Connect to Your AI Assistant

Choose your AI assistant below for specific setup instructions

Follow these steps to connect BTS National Transportation Atlas to Claude:

Step 1: Open Claude Settings

Launch Claude → Click the profile button (bottom left) → Navigate to Settings

Step 2: Access Connectors

Scroll down to the Connectors tab → Navigate to the bottom → Click “Add Custom Connector”

Step 3: Name Your Connector

Enter any name you'd like for this connector

Step 4: Get the Connector URL

Step 5: Add the Connector

Paste the URL in the “Remote MCP Server URL” text box → Click Add

Step 6: Start Using

Your connector is now ready to use in Claude

Follow these steps to connect BTS National Transportation Atlas to ChatGPT:

Step 1: Enable Developer Mode

Go to Settings → Connectors → Advanced → Enable Developer mode

Step 2: Create New Connector

Go back to Connectors page → Click “Create” (top right)

Step 3: Name Your Connector

Enter any name you'd like for this connector (descriptions are optional)

Step 4: Get the Connector URL

Step 5: Add the URL

Paste the URL in the “MCP Server URL” text box

Step 6: Set Authentication

Click the authentication dropdown → Select “No authentication” (PatchOps handles authentication internally)

Step 7: Create the Connector

Click “I understand and want to continue” checkbox → Press Create

Step 8: Using the Connector

Start a new chat → Click the + button (left of text box) → Open dropdown → Hover over three dots labeled “More” → Select your connector

Instructions for connecting BTS National Transportation Atlas to GitHub Copilot:

Coming Soon

Detailed setup instructions for GitHub Copilot will be added here.

For other MCP-compatible platforms:

Step 1: Get the Connector URL

Step 2: Add to Configuration

Add this configuration to your MCP settings file. Replace the URL with your specific connector URL from the /mcp page:

"BTS National Transportation Atlas-MCP": {
  "url": "https://patchops.ai/api/mcp/...",
  "type": "http"
}

Example Configuration

Here’s an example using PatchOps MCP:

"PatchOps-MCP": {
  "url": "https://patchops.ai/api/mcp/...",
  "type": "http"
}