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U.S. Department of Transportation U.S. Department of Transportation Icon United States Department of Transportation United States Department of Transportation

Freight Analysis Framework

Friday, July 28, 2023

About the Freight Analysis Framework

The Freight Analysis Framework (FAF) creates a comprehensive picture of freight movement among states and major metropolitan areas by all modes of transportation. The FAF integrates data from a variety of sources. Starting with data from the Commodity Flow Survey (CFS) and international trade data from the Census Bureau, FAF incorporates data from agriculture, extraction, utility, construction, service, and other sectors. The FAF is produced by BTS with support from FHWA.

FAF Version 5

The FAF5 Regional Database of tonnage, value, and ton-miles by FAF regions of origin and destination, commodity type, and mode, benchmarked to the 2017 Commodity Flow Survey is available. Weights are in thousands of tons, activity is in millions of ton-miles, and values are in millions of 2017 constant dollars. Files listed below are available for download in .csv and MS Access formats.

Update - New Version FAF5.5.1 - The new version of the Freight Analysis Framework (FAF) provides estimates for tonnage, value, and ton-miles by origin-destination pair of FAF regions, commodity type, and mode for:

  • Base year (2017)
  • Annual estimates (2018–2021)
  • Preliminary annual estimates (2022)
  • Forecast year estimates (2023–2050)
  • State-level historical trend estimates (1997–2012)

The release of FAF5.5.1 is available at https://www.bts.gov/faf and includes new preliminary annual estimates for 2022. Going forward, BTS plans to release the preliminary estimates, a new FAF data product, each spring. BTS will replace the preliminary estimates each fall with the complete annual estimates for the preceding year.

The preliminary estimates provide an initial estimate of commodity flows for the preceding year before all of the annual estimate input data sources for that year are available. As such, the preliminary estimates use alternative data sources when input data sources for the annual estimates are not available. BTS welcomes feedback on these new estimates.

The release of FAF5.5.1 also includes updated annual estimates for 2018-2020. Specifically, the imputation processes that are used to estimate foreign trade flows, which were improved in FAF5.5 for the 2021 annual estimates, are now applied to the 2018-2020 flows in FAF5.5.1.

FAF5 Network Data

Summary Statistics and Products

Documentation

Related Information


Previous Versions

View FAF4 data and documentation.

Information on FAF1, FAF2, and FAF3 is available upon request from faf@dot.gov.