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

1999PDFTech ReportBTS99-R-01TransportationCommoditiesEconomic conditionsFreight transportationIndustriesBusinessesEconomic growthInfrastructureInternational tradeManufacturingMarketingSupplyTransportation modesSupply and demandTransportation industryTransportation servicesUnited StatesUnited States. Department of Transportation. Bureau of Transportation StatisticsFang, BingsongHan, XiaoliUnited States. Department of Transportation. Bureau of Transportation StatisticsUS Transportation CollectionThe 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 non-transportation industries) was not explicitly identified, and their output was counted as part of non-transportation industries\u2019 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: 1) Transportation services contributed about $313 billion, or 5 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in 1992, the latest year for which Economic Census data are available (see page 2 box). The value-added by in-house transportation services was about $121 billion, compared with about $192 billion contributed by for-hire transportation; 2) Of the total value-added by transportation services, trucking accounted for 65 percent: 38 percent for in-house trucking and 27 percent for for-hire trucking. Air transportation and railroads accounted for 13 percent and 11 percent, respectively; and, 3) Agriculture, construction, and wholesale/retail trade are the most transportation-intensive sectors, counting both in-house and for-hire services.74