Transportation Satellite Accounts: A New Way of Measuring Transportation Services in America [1999]

BTS Productshttps://doi.org/10.21949/15015971999PDFTech ReportFang, BingsongHan, XiaoliUnited States. Department of Transportation. Bureau of Transportation StatisticsUnited States. Department of Transportation. Bureau of Transportation StatisticsUnited StatesEconomic analysisEconomic factorsEconomic indicatorsFederal governmentGovernment agenciesGross domestic productPrivate enterpriseStatisticsTransportation policyTransportation Satellite AccountsBTS99-R-01Recommended citation: Bureau of Transportation Statistics Transportation Satellite Accounts: A New Way of Measuring Transportation Services in America. BTS99-R-01. Washington, DC: 1999The magnitude of transportation services has long been underestimated in national economic data used by government and private sector decision makers. One reason is that, until now, national measures of transportation services only counted the value of for-hire transportation services. For-hire transportation services are provided by transportation firms to industries and the public on a fee basis, such as railroads, transit agencies, common carrier trucking companies, and pipeline companies. The sizable contribution of in-house transportation (i.e., transportation services that take place within nontransportation industries) was not explicitly identified, and their output was counted as part of nontransportation industries' output, rather than transportation output. Now, a new accounting tool, called the Transportation Satellite Accounts (TSAs), provides a way to measure both in-house and for-hire transportation services. Developed jointly by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) of the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the TSAs reveal several important features concerning the relationship between transportation and the U.S. economy that have not been known before.123