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well as the condition and performance of the
U.S. transportation system, which currently
offers U.S. residents the world’s highest level of
personal mobility. It proceeds to a discussion of
transportation’s importance to the economy and
society as indicated by a variety of economic
indicators. Next, Part I describes the unintended
consequences—accidents, fatalities, and oil
import dependency—associated with transportation.
Finally, it explores the state of transportation
statistics.
This year’s theme section, “Transportation
and the Environment” (Part II of the report), surveys
the collateral damage to the environment
arising from transportation. It focuses on the
scale and dimensions of the damage, and the
effect of actions to ameliorate the damage. Part
II surveys transportation-related environmental
trends for three geographical scales—nationallevel
trends and impacts, air quality at the metropolitan
level, and a comparison of U.S.
transport-related air pollution with that in several
industrialized and developing countries. As
noted in Part II, vehicle emissions have decreased
impressively in the United States, but
some pollutants have increased recently, suggesting
the need for continued monitoring of
pollution trends.
�The State of the
Transportation System
Travel, the Movement of Freight,
and the Transportation System
Americans travel more and move more goods
than ever before. Passenger travel grew in the
United States on average 2.7 percent a year
between 1970 and 1994. Passenger-miles traveled
per person increased from 11,400 miles in
1970 to 16,800 miles in 1994. In the same period,
ton-miles of freight increased by 2.2 percent
annually. By 1994, 12,600 ton-miles of freight
were moved per person.
xiv
On the passenger side, while the growth in
automobile use in terms of absolute miles traveled
overshadows that in all other modes, air
travel tripled and travel in light-duty trucks
(including pickups, mini-vans, and sport-utility
vehicles) quadrupled between 1970 and 1994.
Among the many factors that contributed to this
rapid growth in personal transportation are
growth in population and jobs (including greater
labor force participation of women), increased
household formation, income, vehicle ownership
and licensed driver population, and metropolitan
growth, coupled with residential and job
dispersion. These and other factors will likely
continue to push up passenger travel in the
future, though at a more moderate pace.
Freight transportation grew substantially in
all modes. Information from the 1993 Commodity
Flow Survey (CFS), conducted by BTS
and the Bureau of Census, allows us for the first
time in nearly two decades to look at the complex
world of freight movement in a technologically
evolving and globalizing economy—how
much and what moves over which modes within
Thousands of miles
20
15
10
5
0
1970
PASSENGER-MILES PER CAPITA
1974 1978 1982 1986 1990 1994
SOURCE: See chapter 1, figure 1-3.