Department of Transportation
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and its operating administrations - NHTSA, FMCSA, FAA, FRA, FTA, MARAD, PHMSA, and BTS - publish a number of public APIs covering vehicles, motor carriers, aviation, transit, freight, and transportation statistics.
Real signal across most facets with visible, nameable gaps — the contract exists but is thin, or the portal is good while governance and commercial terms are absent.
API Evangelist profiles Department of Transportation the way a machine reads it — 36 machine-readable artifacts across 18 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — Department of Transportation scores 47.7/100 (developing), with a separate agent-readiness read of 48/100 (agent ready). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.
How we profile Department of Transportation
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for Department of Transportation. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 18
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
Bureau of Transportation Statistics Data Portal
Public datasets and downloadable data products published by BTS.
Federal Railroad Administration Safety Data
FRA Office of Safety Analysis - rail incident, accident, and inspection data.
Federal Transit Administration National Transit Database
Public-transportation operating, financial, and asset data submitted by transit agencies under the National Transit Database.
PHMSA Pipeline Safety Data
Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration incident, mileage, and operator data for U.S. pipelines.
Department of Transportation Airport Status API
The Airport Status API from Department of Transportation — 1 operation(s) for airport status.
Department of Transportation Authority API
Operating authority records
Department of Transportation Carriers API
Motor carrier lookups
Department of Transportation Complaints API
Consumer complaint data
Department of Transportation Crashes API
Crash data
Department of Transportation Inspections API
Roadside inspection data
Department of Transportation Makes API
Vehicle makes
Department of Transportation Manufacturers API
Vehicle manufacturers
Department of Transportation Models API
Vehicle models
Department of Transportation Ratings API
5-Star Safety Ratings
Department of Transportation Recalls API
Vehicle, equipment, child seat, and tire recalls
Department of Transportation Vehicle Variables API
Vehicle variable definitions
Department of Transportation VIN Decode API
Decode VINs into structured vehicle data
Department of Transportation WMI API
World Manufacturer Identifier (WMI) decoding
Scroll within the panel for all 18 ·
Open Collections 4
Open, tool-agnostic collections carry the same runnable value as Postman without locking you to one client — the portable, forkable form of the same exercise.
Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).
FAA Airport Status API
OPEN COLLECTIONFMCSA QCMobile API
OPEN COLLECTIONNHTSA Vehicle Safety API
OPEN COLLECTIONNHTSA vPIC (Vehicle Product Information Catalog) API
OPEN COLLECTIONPricing Plans 1
Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Rate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Department Of Transportation Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSFinOps 1
Cost, billing, and metering signals let a buyer model the financial operations of an API before it's live. We profile them for the same reason we profile pricing: the money is part of the contract.
Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.
Semantic Vocabularies 1
JSON-LD contexts give the data shared meaning across APIs. We profile them because semantics are what let a machine reconcile 'customer' here with 'customer' somewhere else.
JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.
Dot Context
JSON-LDSpectral Rules 2
Governance rulesets we run against this provider's specs — the automated checks behind parts of the score. Profiling them makes the quality bar explicit and re-runnable, not a matter of opinion.
JSON Schema 3
Standalone JSON Schema definitions describe the data models behind the API. We profile them so the shapes are validatable on their own — useful long after a single request is forgotten.
Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.
Examples 2
Real request and response payloads are what turn a spec from abstract into obvious — and they're one of the twelve things an agent needs to call an API correctly on the first try.
Example request and response payloads for these APIs.
Recall Example
EXAMPLEVin Decode Example
EXAMPLESecurity Posture 2
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Agentic Access 1
An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.
Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.
Resources
Every other property we hold for Department of Transportation — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Get Started 1
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Documentation 1
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Agent Surfaces 1
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Access & Security 2
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Company 1
The organization behind the API
← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/department-of-transportation · machine-readable index on apis.io