National Highway Planning Network for Contiguous U.S. and Territories

National Highway Planning Network (NHPN) is a vector line dataset of major U.S. highways compiled by the Federal Highway Administration. It covers the 48 contiguous states, District of Columbia, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico with a nominal scale of 1:100,000 and a maximal positional error of 80 meters. The dataset includes Rural Arterials, Urban Principal Arterials, and all National Highway System routes as of its May 2014 compilation.

Use Cases

• Analyze the spatial distribution of Rural Arterials versus Urban Principal Arterials for infrastructure planning.
• Calculate network connectivity and accessibility metrics using the National Highway System routes.
• Assess the positional accuracy of highway geometries given the documented 80-meter maximal error.

Strengths

• Covers a broad geography including 48 contiguous states, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.
• Provides a defined positional accuracy with a maximal error of 80 meters.
• Compiled from the authoritative Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) as part of the National Transportation Atlas Database.

Limitations

• The core data is from a May 2014 compilation and may not reflect recent highway construction or changes.
• The dataset's attribute schema and specific column details are not provided in the input.
• The nominal scale of 1:100,000 may be insufficient for applications requiring high-precision, localized analysis.

Provenance

Source

Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), U.S. Department of Transportation / Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS).

Collection Method

Compiled for the National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD).

Time Range

Compilation date: May 01, 2014.

Freshness

The metadata was last updated in July 2025, but the underlying data compilation date is May 2014.

Geography

United States (48 contiguous states, District of Columbia, Alaska, Hawaii) and Puerto Rico.