[R] Error in running get_acs()

[Ben Bolker]

   This might be related: 
https://bsky.app/profile/kylewalker.bsky.social/post/3lm3ivicrxc2q

----
 > The Census website has been blocking requests from tigris (and curl) 
since yesterday.

(Don’t worry, the datasets are still there!)

I’ve patched tigris, install with 
`pak::pak("walkerke/tigris using ftp-patch")` and everything should work.
---


On 2025-04-09 2:03 p.m., Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> The tidycensus package is a contributed package, it's not part of R. You 
> should probably report this to its maintainers at
> 
>    https://github.com/walkerke/tidycensus/issues
> 
> Duncan Murdoch
> 
> On 2025-04-09 12:15 p.m., Deana Kittaneh via R-help wrote:
>> Hi R team!
>>      Since last Friday 04/04, my team and I have faced an error with 
>> running  the 'get_acs()' command from the tidycensus package. The code 
>> we ran and the error message we received are shown below. Our 
>> troubleshooting efforts showed that:
>>
>> 1. When we run the code with geometries turned off, the code runs as 
>> intended, but once geometry is made TRUE the code does not work.
>> 2. We checked geometry = TRUE with various geographies (block group, 
>> place, county) and the error remained the same
>> 3. We were still able to download and use the shapefile data from the 
>> Census Tigerlines folders online, which led us to suspect the error 
>> may be within R since the shapefiles are functional on the Census 
>> website.
>>
>> Thanks for the help!
>>
>> Code that works (geometry is FALSE here):
>> #median household income for IL by tract
>> acs  <- get_acs(geography = "tract",
>>                   table = "B19013", #can turn off if variables specified
>>                   state = "IL",
>>                   year = 2023,
>>                   geometry = FALSE,  #FALSE removes geometry, TRUE 
>> keeps it
>>                   cache_table = TRUE)
>>
>> Code that doesn't work (geometry is TRUE here)
>> #median household income for IL by tract
>> acs  <- get_acs(geography = "tract",
>>                   table = "B19013", #can turn off if variables specified
>>                   state = "IL",
>>                   year = 2023,
>>                   geometry = TRUE, #FALSE removes geometry, TRUE keeps it
>>                   cache_table = TRUE)
>>
>> Error message:
>> Getting data from the 2019-2023 5-year ACS
>> Downloading feature geometry from the Census website.  To cache 
>> shapefiles for use in future sessions, set `options(tigris_use_cache = 
>> TRUE)`.
>> Loading ACS5 variables for 2023 from table B19013 and caching the 
>> dataset for faster future access.
>> Using FIPS code '17' for state 'IL'
>> Error : Cannot open "C: 
>> \Users\DKittaneh\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpQpm4Z8"; The source could be 
>> corrupt or not supported. See `st_drivers()` for a list of supported 
>> formats.
>> In addition: Warning message:
>> In unzip(file_loc, exdir = tmp) : error 1 in extracting from zip file
>> Error: Your geometry data download failed. Please try again later or 
>> check the status of the Census Bureau website at https:// 
>> www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide https://www.R-project.org/posting- 
>> guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide https://www.R-project.org/posting- 
> guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

-- 
Dr. Benjamin Bolker
Professor, Mathematics & Statistics and Biology, McMaster University
Director, School of Computational Science and Engineering
 > E-mail is sent at my convenience; I don't expect replies outside of 
working hours.