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cance of transportation is comparable to that of
health, food, and education.
While GDP attributed to transportation-related
demand provides a measure of transportation’s
importance to the economy, it does not
fully reflect the transport content of the variety
of goods and services delivered to final demand.
Value-added by transport industries should provide
that information, except that the Standard
Industrial Classification used in the National
Accounts recognizes only for-hire transportation
services. The for-hire industry does not include
the significant role of so-called own-use transport
activities carried out by nontransportation
industries in support of their primary production.
Thus, transportation’s contribution to the
economy is significantly undercounted. Indeed,
in 1993 (the last year of available data), valueadded
originating in the for-hire transportation
services industry was $208 billion.
This offers BTS an important challenge to
find a comprehensive and systematic way to
measure transportation’s contribution to the
economy more fully. In turn, such a measure
will allow a better assessment of the need for
transportation infrastructure and transportation’s
impacts on the production of other industries
and the environment. To this end, BTS and the
Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) are jointly
developing a Transportation Satellite Account
(TSA). The aim of the TSA is, first, to develop a
consistent, comprehensive, and reliable means
of assessing transportation activities (both forhire
and own-use) in relation to other industries
and activities of the economy; and, second, to
create a framework that organizes different types
of transportation data (e.g., employment, output,
cost, energy use, infrastructure) in order to facilitate
consistent analysis of relationships between
the various aspects of transportation.
The importance of transportation services as
inputs to production varies by industry. In general,
material-intensive industries tend to be transportation
intensive. Measured in producer prices,
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transportation costs range from 10 cents per dollar
of output in the glass, stone, and clay product
industry to 2 cents per dollar of output in the
finance, insurance, and real estate industries.
Consumer and government expenditures also
are important indicators of the value of transportation
to society. In the United States, transportation’s
share in total household expenditures
was 19 percent in 1994. Only housing subsumed
a larger percentage of total household expenditures.
Not surprisingly, transportation expenditures
in rural and urban areas differ. For
example, in 1994, rural households spent almost
24 percent of their incomes on transportation
compared with about 18 percent for urban
households. Also, rural households spent more
(both absolutely and proportionately) on vehicle
purchases and fuel, but less on insurance and
repairs than urban households.
Federal spending on transportation increased
in real terms by 6.5 percent between 1982 and
1992, while spending by state and local governments
(excluding federal grants) increased by 46
percent over the same period. In relative terms,
the federal role in financing transportation diminished
from 39 percent to 32 percent between
1982 and 1992. Taking federal, state, and local
together, most government funds were spent on
highways (about 60 percent), followed by transit,
air, and water transportation. Between 1982 and
1992, the proportion of federal spending on transit,
rail, and water transport decreased, while air
transport and highway funding shares increased.
Between 1977 and 1994, federal transportation-related
budget receipts including revenue
from transportation-related federal trust funds
(taxes and user fees dedicated to a specific
mode) increased from $16.0 billion to $19.7 billion
(in constant 1987 dollars). The two largest
federal revenue generators are the Highway
Trust Fund—which has a highway account and,
since 1983, a transit account—and the Airport
and Airway Trust Fund. Of these, aviation trust
fund revenues increased the most; transit account