2002 TIGER/Line Files Contain Major Structural Changes

The Census Bureau has removed the 1990 geography from the 2002 TIGER/Line files replacing it with current geography. The 2002 TIGER/Line files no longer contain the geographic entities we called Key Geographic Locations (KGLs) that were carried in Record Type 9. Some of the information that was formerly in Record Type 9 now is included in Record Type 7. The water flag also has moved from Record Type S to Record Type P. The water flag is the only way to determine if a polygon is land or water, and will now tell you whether we consider the water to be perennial or intermittent.

Users should note that the new Record Type B, which contains corrected geography from the Count Question Resolution (CQR) Program, will have records only for those polygons that are involved in the change. They will not be complete boundaries for the entities involved. Record Type B will only show the change and users who need to know what the Census 2000 boundary should have been will need to apply the Record Type B change to Record Type S (which contains the Census 2000 geographic area codes for each polygon).

To improve the ability of data users to merge multiple counties, the Census Bureau is adding the state and county codes to those Record Type 1 records for the adjacent county. These are the Record Type 1 records that have the single-side source code set, and until this version of the TIGER/Line files, all of the data elements for the side of the record "outside" the county have been blank. We also are making the TLIDs for these records the same so that the complete chain representing a segment of the boundary between two neighboring counties will have the same TLID code in both counties. New for the 2002 TIGER/Line files is a permanent zero-cell (or node) identification number (TZID) for each node. As with the TLIDs, the nodes/points along the boundary between two neighboring counties will have the same TZID code in both counties.