BTS Border Crossings Monitor

Fetches inbound land-border crossing statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) Socrata open-data portal and outputs one structured dataset row per source record, filtered by border, measure, state, port name, date range, and a configurable row limit.

This Actor is intended for trade-activity monitoring, logistics trend analysis, border-congestion research, economic dashboards, and alerting workflows that need source-linked rows from the BTS Border Crossing Entry Data without manually querying the Socrata API.

Source

• BTS / DOT Socrata dataset: https://data.bts.gov/id/keg4-3bc2
• Direct JSON API: https://data.transportation.gov/resource/keg4-3bc2.json
• The dataset covers inbound crossings at U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico land-border ports for trucks, trains, containers, buses, vehicles, passengers, and pedestrians.

Cloud source canary: 10 rows returned from Apify Cloud; sample Columbus — Personal Vehicle Passengers, sample key 2406@2026-05-01T00:00:00.000, sample value 80444.

Inputs

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
maxItems	integer	100	Maximum rows to return. Min 1, max 1000.
border	string	all	Filter by border. Accepted values: all, US-Canada Border, US-Mexico Border.
measure	string	empty	Filter by crossing measure. Examples: Trucks, Personal Vehicles, Personal Vehicle Passengers, Truck Containers Loaded, Pedestrians, Bus Passengers.
state	string	empty	Case-insensitive exact match on state name.
portName	string	empty	Case-insensitive substring match on port name.
startDate	string (ISO date)	empty	Inclusive start date, YYYY-MM-DD.
endDate	string (ISO date)	empty	Inclusive end date, YYYY-MM-DD.
includeRaw	boolean	false	When true, include the full raw Socrata row in the output under the raw field.

Output Fields

Each dataset item corresponds to one filtered BTS source record:

• portName
• state
• portCode
• border
• date
• measure
• value — numeric, parsed from the source when possible
• latitude
• longitude
• sourceUrl
• raw — only present when includeRaw=true
• collectedAt — ISO-8601 UTC timestamp

Use Cases

• Monitor monthly/annual border-crossing volumes by border, state, or specific port.
• Track trends in truck container loads for supply-chain capacity planning.
• Identify congestion or volume anomalies at individual border ports.
• Feed economic dashboards that need public, source-linked border-trade statistics.
• Feed a downstream alerting workflow when a port's crossing value drops below or exceeds a threshold.

Limitations

• The Actor uses the Socrata $limit parameter; it does not paginate beyond maxItems. Larger data sets require manual re-runs with different date ranges or filters.
• The BTS Socrata portal redirect (data.transportation.gov -> data.bts.gov) may change without notice.
• BTS periodically revises historical data; past snapshots in the Actor output may differ from what the live portal shows today.
• Measure name values, state names, and port names may evolve as BTS updates the catalog.
• Date values in the source use the format YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.sss; the Actor outputs them as-is.
• The raw Socrata response may include additional metadata fields (e.g., : @computed_region_*) that are not mapped in the output schema.
• Rate limits on the Socrata API are not enforced by the Actor; large maxItems values or rapid re-runs could trigger throttling.

Disclaimers

This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), or any other government agency.

The data provided is public statistics only. Public BTS data may lag behind the latest official figures, may be revised after initial publication, and may not reflect the most current border-crossing volumes. Users should verify important decisions against the official BTS source before relying on this data for any material purpose.

This Actor does not provide trade, legal, regulatory, or compliance advice. Nothing in the output constitutes legal, financial, or business guidance.

Pricing

From $1.00 per 1,000 BTS rows, plus the $0.00005 Actor-start event.

Pay per event: one dataset-row event per output row ($0.001) plus the small Actor-start event ($0.00005). A default 100-row run costs up to $0.10005 in Actor events; the 1,000-row maximum costs up to $1.00005.