ATIS Route ID

The first two characters of the ATIS Route ID indicate the county that has jurisdiction of the route.  The code is based on National Crime Information Center (NCIC) codes.  Note, some documentation may also refer to NCIC codes as National Crimes (NC) codes.  

Table 1 is a summary of the NCIC codes as well as a crosswalk with Federal Information Processing System (FIPS) codes, which are common with other applications, such as U.S. Census demographics.

State Owned Highways

Character 3 indicates which system the road is signed to: Interstate, U.S. route, or Arizona state highway.  Character 4 is a qualifier that indicates the type of route, such as a truck route, alternate route, business route, or other.  Tables 2A and 2B summarize the codes used in these fields.

Some important notes:

• Business loops are coded with "S" since they are state highways and not part of the interstate system.

• State Loop 89 (SL089) in Page is the only highway in ATIS with the Loop qualifier.  It is also no longer part of the state highway system.   

  • Although highways 101, 202, and 303 are referred to as Loops, they are not coded with the Loop qualifier in ATIS, since it is not necessary for ATIS to differentiate these highways from other state highways.

Characters 25 through 28 record the suffix, or type of road, of locally-owned routes.  State owned routes do not have suffixes so these characters are left blank.

Table 3 lists the most commonly used suffixes in ATIS.  It is important to know there are no standard suffix abbreviations.  Local governments, such as county, city, and tribal agencies, use their own suffix abbreviations.

The carriageway identifies the cardinality, or direction of travel, the ATIS record represents.  All ATIS routes have at least one record that represents the cardinal direction of travel.  In cases of routes with non-traversable barriers (e.g. dirt, raised median, or other barrier), ATIS may also include a separate record for the non-cardinal direction.  The carriageway code is important for several applications, such as using ATIS to calculate driving paths between locations.

For state owned routes, the cardinal direction is the direction of increasing mileposts.  Typically, mileposts start in the south or west and increase while moving north or east.  For non-state (local) owned routes, the cardinal direction is the primary direction of the roadway, typically moving towards the north or east.  To learn more about cardinality, refer to the glossary page Cardinality.

Table 4 defines the codes used in character 31.  ATIS routes that represent the cardinal direction on mainline routes are left blank.