U.S. Department of Transportation
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is the federal transportation regulator for the United States, the deepest travel market in the world. In aviation DOT is not a participant in the distribution chain — it is the counterweight to it: through the Office of the Secretary it writes and enforces 14 CFR Part 256 on electronic airline information systems (explicitly naming global distribution systems, corporate booking tools and internet flight search tools), Part 257 on code-share disclosure, Part 250 on oversales, Part 259 on enhanced passenger protections, Part 260 on fare and ancillary fee refunds, and 399.84 on full-fare advertising. Its Bureau of Transportation Statistics is the sole authoritative source for US airline economics — T-100 segment traffic, Form 41 financials, the Consumer Airfare Report city-pair fare tables, denied boardings and mishandled baggage — published as free Socrata SODA APIs. Its Federal Aviation Administration operates a Gravitee API portal at api.faa.gov whose public catalog is enumerable without login and serves genuinely open, unauthenticated OpenAPI 3.0.1 services for national airspace delay status and aeronautical chart product releases, alongside gated APIs for pilot records and safety reporting. Beyond aviation the operating administrations each run their own surface: NHTSA publishes anonymous vehicle, recall, complaint and safety-rating APIs; FRA publishes SOAP/WSDL rail safety services; FMCSA issues the department's only self-serve API key behind a Login.gov account. API posture, honestly: transportation.gov itself is bot-blocked (HTTP 403 to any non-browser client) and publishes no departmental OpenAPI, there is no OAuth, no idempotency key, no RFC 9457 errors, no Sunset headers and no security.txt anywhere — but the data surfaces underneath are open, unmetered, public domain and fully bulk-exportable. This is a provider with an excellent exit path and no commercial lock-in of any kind.
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 U.S. Department of Transportation the way a machine reads it — 61 machine-readable artifacts across 5 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 — U.S. Department of Transportation scores 52.0/100 (developing), with a separate agent-readiness read of 31/100 (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. Every facet and dimension name is a link: it opens that measurement's page on APIs.io, where the rating runs across the whole catalog — the exact checks that feed it, how every profiled provider distributes on it, and who is at the top of it.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0
Put this on your own site. The badge is drawn live from U.S. Department of Transportation's current Kin Score — paste it once and it updates itself every time the score is recomputed. It follows your visitor's light or dark setting, and it links back here so anyone who sees it can read the full breakdown.
<!-- Kin Score · API Evangelist -->
<a href="https://providers.apievangelist.com/providers/us-dot/"
title="U.S. Department of Transportation on API Evangelist — API profile and Kin Score">
<img src="https://apis.io/badge/us-dot.svg"
alt="U.S. Department of Transportation Kin Score — API readiness rating by API Evangelist" width="150" height="150" loading="lazy">
</a>[](https://providers.apievangelist.com/providers/us-dot/)<!-- Kin Score · API Evangelist -->
<a href="https://providers.apievangelist.com/providers/us-dot/"
title="U.S. Department of Transportation on API Evangelist — API profile and Kin Score">
<img src="https://apis.io/badge/us-dot/card.svg"
alt="U.S. Department of Transportation Kin Score — API readiness rating by API Evangelist" width="340" height="120" loading="lazy">
</a>More shapes, themes and sizes → · Score as JSON · How badges work
How we profile U.S. Department of Transportation
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for U.S. 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 42
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.
FAA Data Catalog (CKAN Action API v3)
The Federal Aviation Administration's open data catalog, running CKAN 2.11.4 and exposing the full CKAN Action API v3 anonymously at /api/3/action/. package_list, package_search...
DOT Data Hub Open Data API
The departmental open data platform, served from both data.transportation.gov and datahub.transportation.gov on Socrata SODA 2.1. For travel and aviation this is where the DOT O...
Bureau of Transportation Statistics Open Data API
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics open data platform on Socrata SODA 2.1, and the authoritative record of US commercial aviation activity. Aviation holdings verified live ...
NHTSA vPIC (Vehicle Product Information Catalog) API
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Vehicle Product Information Catalog and VIN decoder, and the most widely consumed API in the department. Decodes any US-mark...
NHTSA Safety API (recalls, complaints, safety ratings)
The NHTSA public safety API that powers the dynamic search applications on nhtsa.gov. Three families: /recalls for safety recalls by vehicle or campaign number, /complaints for ...
FRA Safety Data Web Services
The Federal Railroad Administration's rail safety web services, and the only SOAP surface in the department. Two WSDL 1.1 contracts were retrieved live and harvested verbatim on...
FMCSA QCMobile API
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's carrier data API — real-time queries on motor carrier registration, authority and safety data, including all of the passenger c...
U.S. Department of Transportation Air Carrier API
The AirCarrierApi API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 4 operation(s) for aircarrierapi.
U.S. Department of Transportation Axhsubmitdiscrepancies API
The Axhsubmitdiscrepancies API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 1 operation(s) for axhsubmitdiscrepancies.
U.S. Department of Transportation Coded Instrument Flight Procedures (CIFP) API
The Coded Instrument Flight Procedures (CIFP) API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 2 operation(s) for coded instrument flight procedures (cifp).
U.S. Department of Transportation Daily Digital Obstacle File (DDOF) API
The Daily Digital Obstacle File (DDOF) API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 2 operation(s) for daily digital obstacle file (ddof).
U.S. Department of Transportation Digital Enroute Charts US (DDECUS) API
The Digital Enroute Charts US (DDECUS) API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 2 operation(s) for digital enroute charts us (ddecus).
U.S. Department of Transportation Digital Enroute Supplement (DERS) API
The Digital Enroute Supplement (DERS) API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 2 operation(s) for digital enroute supplement (ders).
U.S. Department of Transportation FAA Airport Status Service API
The FAA Airport Status Service API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 2 operation(s) for faa airport status service.
U.S. Department of Transportation Grand Canyon VFR Chart API
The Grand Canyon VFR Chart API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 2 operation(s) for grand canyon vfr chart.
U.S. Department of Transportation Gulf of Mexico IFR Enroute Chart API
The Gulf of Mexico IFR Enroute Chart API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 2 operation(s) for gulf of mexico ifr enroute chart.
U.S. Department of Transportation IFR Enroute Charts API
The IFR Enroute Charts API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 2 operation(s) for ifr enroute charts.
U.S. Department of Transportation IFR Planning Charts API
The IFR Planning Charts API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 2 operation(s) for ifr planning charts.
U.S. Department of Transportation log file API
The log file API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 1 operation(s) for log file.
U.S. Department of Transportation NASR 28 Day Subscription API
The NASR 28 Day Subscription API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 2 operation(s) for nasr 28 day subscription.
U.S. Department of Transportation Oceanic Route Charts API
The Oceanic Route Charts API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 2 operation(s) for oceanic route charts.
U.S. Department of Transportation PDM API
The PDM API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 1 operation(s) for pdm.
U.S. Department of Transportation Sectional Charts API
The Sectional Charts API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 2 operation(s) for sectional charts.
U.S. Department of Transportation SNMP API
The SNMP API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 1 operation(s) for snmp.
U.S. Department of Transportation Supplement Chart API
The Supplement Chart API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 2 operation(s) for supplement chart .
U.S. Department of Transportation Terminal Area Charts API
The Terminal Area Charts API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 2 operation(s) for terminal area charts.
U.S. Department of Transportation TIM API
The TIM API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 2 operation(s) for tim.
U.S. Department of Transportation US Terminal Procedures Publication (TPP) API
The US Terminal Procedures Publication (TPP) API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 2 operation(s) for us terminal procedures publication (tpp).
U.S. Department of Transportation US VFR Wall Planning Chart API
The US VFR Wall Planning Chart API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 2 operation(s) for us vfr wall planning chart.
U.S. Department of Transportation Version API
The Version API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 1 operation(s) for version.
U.S. Department of Transportation VFR Helicopter Route Chart API
The VFR Helicopter Route Chart API from U.S. Department of Transportation — 4 operation(s) for vfr helicopter route chart.
FMCSA SaferBus API
The FMCSA SaferBus API is a RESTful service making available safety performance data for U.S. DOT-registered bus companies. It enables developers to build consumer-facing produc...
NHTSA vPIC Vehicle API
The NHTSA Vehicle Product Information Catalog (vPIC) API provides programmatic access to vehicle make, model, manufacturer, and type data compiled by NHTSA. Key capabilities inc...
NHTSA Datasets and APIs
NHTSA provides public datasets and APIs covering vehicle safety complaints, recalls, safety ratings (NCAP), and defect investigations. Complaint data entered into NHTSA's Office...
DOT Open Data Portal
The U.S. Department of Transportation Open Data Portal provides access to transportation datasets published by DOT agencies including FMCSA, NHTSA, FTA, BTS, FAA, PHMSA, and mor...
US Department of Transportation childSeats API
Child Seat search and list endpoints
US Department of Transportation equipment API
Equipment search and list endpoints
US Department of Transportation ewr API
Early Warning Report endpoints
US Department of Transportation foreignCampaigns API
Foreign Campaign search and list endpoints
US Department of Transportation safetyIssues API
Recalls, Investigations, Complaints, and Manufacturer Communications
US Department of Transportation tires API
Tire search and list endpoints
US Department of Transportation vehicles API
Vehicle search and list endpoints
Scroll within the panel for all 42 ·
Open Collections 5
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).
Aeronautic Product Release API
OPEN COLLECTIONPRD Air Carrier API
OPEN COLLECTIONAirport Status Web Service
OPEN COLLECTIONsas-api
OPEN COLLECTIONODE REST API
OPEN COLLECTIONEvent Specifications 2
Not every API is request/response. AsyncAPI describes the event-driven and streaming side — the webhooks and channels — so the asynchronous half of the interface is documented the same way the synchronous half is.
AsyncAPI definitions for this provider's event-driven and streaming APIs.
Us Dot Event Surfaces
ASYNCAPIUSDOT ITS JPO Operational Data Environment (ODE) — Kafka event surface
DERIVED, NOT PUBLISHED BY USDOT. The U.S. Department of Transportation publishes no AsyncAPI document. This document is a faithful derivation of the Kafka topic catalog the USDO...
ASYNCAPIJSON Schema 6
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.
GeoJSON Bounding Box
JSON SCHEMAWZDx v4.2 DeviceFeed
JSON SCHEMADirection Enumerated Type
JSON SCHEMAWZDx Feed Information
JSON SCHEMARoad Event Feature (GeoJSON Feature)
JSON SCHEMAWZDx v4.2 Work Zone Feed
JSON SCHEMAExamples 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.
Security Posture 3
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 U.S. 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 6
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Documentation 9
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Scroll within the panel for all 9 ·
Agent Surfaces 8
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Scroll within the panel for all 8 ·
Design & Contract 5
Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events
Build 4
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 4
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 5
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Commercial 3
Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use
Company 2
The organization behind the API
Other 10
Properties that don't map to a standard resource type
Scroll within the panel for all 10 ·
← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/us-dot · machine-readable index on apis.io
This is an independent, third-party profile of U.S. Department of Transportation, published by API Evangelist. We do not operate, host, resell, or support these APIs, and we are not affiliated with or endorsed by the company unless stated above. Everything here is built from publicly available information — the company's own site, developer portal, documentation, public repositories, and the specifications it publishes for public use. Nothing is obtained by breaching a system, defeating an access control, or using credentials.
The Kin Score and Agent Readiness rating are independently calculated assessments of a company's public API artifacts, scored against a published rubric. They are not certifications, endorsements, security assessments, or audits.
Corrections, re-scores, and removal are free — no partnership or purchase required, and you do not need to justify the request. A removed company is recorded as unrated, never scored zero for having asked. Acknowledgement within one business day; removal within two.
info@apievangelist.com
·
Read the full data-sourcing policy →
On a security or compliance team? Put security in the subject line and
you will get a person, not a form — we will tell you exactly which public URLs this profile was built from.