The Department of Transportation, Secretary of Transportation has a requirement for Analytical Support Services to support the mission of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) in the compilation, analysis, dissemination and archiving of transportation information and statistics.

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) is the principal federal statistical agency within the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) and a politically objective supplier of trusted and statistically sound baseline, contextual, and trend information used to shape transportation policy, investments, and research across the U.S. BTS is the preeminent source of statistics on commercial aviation, multimodal freight, and transportation economics. BTS is charged with collecting, compiling, analyzing, and publishing a comprehensive set of transportation statistics on the performance and impacts of the national transportation system.

As part of this mandate, BTS is required to provide statistics on the extent, connectivity, and condition of the transportation system and to develop and maintain a national transportation atlas database that is comprised of geospatial databases that depict transportation networks. While BTS’ current suite of spatial products accomplishes this goal for most passenger and freight transportation modes in the U.S., one that unmapped at a national scale is scheduled intercity passenger bus1 . In fact, a comprehensive national map of these services has not existed in the public domain since the termination of two well-known products (Russell’s National Motorcoach Guides2 and the American Intercity Bus Riders Association map3 ) prior to 2016.

• The overarching objective of this procurement is to help BTS expand and maintain the Intercity Bus Atlas (ICBA) project. While a completed ICBA is envisioned as a tool for the industry, governments, public, researchers, and policy makers to better understand, study, and make decisions about the extent, density, frequency, affordability, connectivity, and mobility impacts of the intercity bus industry in the United States, BTS still lacks critical information and connections about and within the industry to complete the Atlas.
• Since 2017, schedule data collection has been intermittent and incomprehensive, and has been centered on three core efforts:
  • Direct networking and outreach by BTS ICBA staff members, including presentations at conferences and trade events (2017 to present).
  • Completion of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Transportation Research Board (TRB) National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) study (#08-133) entitled “Implementing the National Intercity Bus Atlas”9 (2019 to 2024), which was directed to (1) catalogue intercity bus carriers, (2) pull available GTFS data, and (3) develop a gameplan to keep the ICBA maintained.
  • Expansion of the BTS National Transit Map10, which contains the stops and routes depicted in the GTFS files submitted by all transit agencies who receive federal funds, pursuant a new Federal Transit Administration (FTA) requirement that all such agencies (many of which operate services meeting the definition of “intercity”) submit a GTFS file alongside their regular National Transit Database (NTD) submissions.
• While these methods collectively added 72 feeds from 102 Providers (and their 1,000+ routes and 26,000+ stops), the Atlas nevertheless suffers from several outstanding problems, namely (1) many of its contributing schedules are now out-of-date (i.e., they were collected at one point in time without the means to acquire updated data), (2) there are known Providers entirely missing from the map, and (3) there are likely other, unknown Providers we don’t know how to identify
• In turn, BTS needs help gaining regular, direct access to the most recent schedule information for all scheduled intercity passenger bus carriers in the United States.
• The Contractor(s) shall complete the requirements under two (2) main tasks as described below
  • Under Task 1, the Contractor(s) shall hold a kick-off meeting and develop a project management and work plan.
  • Under Task 2, the Contractor(s) will regularly provide schedule and route network data, in the Generalized Transit Feed Specification Schedule (GTFS-Schedule11) format, to BTS for all the Providers for whom they have direct access to required source information.