I'm trying to get the TIGER/line files for roads to create a raster of major and minor road density for about half of the USA.
The problem is the interactive tool provided
(https://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/shapefiles/index.php?year=2020&layergroup=Roads)
is very limited in use, in that you can only download the primary roads nationwise.
I also need secondary roads, and preferably even unpaved roads, but it seems like those can only be downloaded per county?
I thought the tigris package in r would help, but it seems like while there is a way to request multiple counties at once
(see https://rpubs.com/walkerke/tigris01)
I would still need to type every county to get all roads for a state, and do this for the +/- 30 states I need the data for?
I'm hoping someone knows how I can get my hands on primary, secondary, and preferably all roads of the contiguous United States, or a simpler way to get it per state?
Best Answer
They have less advertised Esri geodatabase files that contain the full country:
https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-geodatabase-file.html