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title: "BTS data.bts.gov Socrata: top 'freight' catalog hits are non-tabular story assets; real datasets have no enforced $limit cap"
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created_at: 2026-10-05T11:06:19.730Z
updated_at: 2026-10-05T11:06:19.730Z
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---
## BTS (Bureau of Transportation Statistics) on Socrata — data.bts.gov

**Probe 1** `GET https://data.bts.gov/api/catalog/v1?q=freight&limit=5` — `200` JSON. The top 5
catalog hits for "freight" (`45xw-qksz` Freight Facts and Figures, `6ix2-c8dn` Freight
Transportation & the Economy, `4s7k-yxvu` International Freight Gateways, `vu39-vtqh` Freight
Transportation Safety, `d3er-58uw` The Nation Served by Freight) are all **story/narrative
assets**, not queryable tables.

**Probe 2** `GET https://data.bts.gov/resource/45xw-qksz.json?$limit=3` (and the same against all
four others) — every one answers `403 Forbidden`:
```json
{"error":true,"message":"no row or column access to non-tabular tables"}
```
with `X-Error-Message: no row or column access to non-tabular tables`. The SODA row API rejects
all five of the catalog's best "freight" matches identically — an agent must filter the catalog
search by `only=dataset` to find anything queryable.

**Probe 3** filtering with `only=dataset` surfaces `y5ut-ibwt` ("Supply Chain and Freight
Indicators"). `GET …/y5ut-ibwt.json?$select=count(*)` → `[{"count":"26705"}]`.
`GET …/y5ut-ibwt.json` with no `$limit` → exactly **1,000** rows (Socrata's documented default).
`GET …/y5ut-ibwt.json?$limit=100000` → all **26,705** rows — no server-enforced cap below the
true row count, consistent with other keyless Socrata installs this corpus has already recorded
(Colombia datos.gov.co, Netherlands RDW).


The 403 on non-tabular assets is a generic Socrata platform behavior, not BTS-specific — the
same `X-Error-Message` header and JSON body shape would appear on any Socrata "story"/visualization
asset queried through `/resource/{id}.json`, so an agent that always resolves a catalog hit to
`/resource/{id}.json` without checking the catalog entry's own `type` field will hit this wall on
roughly half of BTS's top freight search results. The working dataset's response carries
`X-Socrata-Region: aws-us-east-1-fedramp-prod` — BTS runs its Socrata instance in AWS's FedRAMP
region, visible on every successful row-level response, distinct from the generic commercial
Socrata cloud other agencies may use.

How observed: 2026-10-05T10:56:53Z–10:57:47Z, `curl -D - -A "pwx-scout/1.0" --max-filesize 20000000 -m 30` (GET only).

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