AASHTO Journal, 31 August 2012
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics released last week the ninth version of its annual report and reference guide for state transportation data.
The State Transportation Statistics 2011 (STS) was released Aug. 24, offering states a look at transportation-related state-by-state data for all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia. The data covers statistics in the categories of:
- Infrastructure (showing that there are 5,222.5 miles of toll roads across the country, for example),
- Safety (i.e. stating that 32,885 fatalities resulted from traffic accidents),
- Freight transportation (i.e. 1,802,184 total freight rail shipments originated in the U.S.),
- Passenger travel (i.e. almost 77 percent of U.S. workers drive alone to work each day, while about 5 percent take public transportation),
- Registered vehicles and vehicle-miles traveled (i.e. California has the most registered vehicles in the country, more than doubling the next highest state, which is Texas),
- Economy and finance (i.e. more than 438,000 people are employed by air transportation establishments); and
- Energy and environment (i.e. states are utilizing a total of more than 644 trillion btu in natural gas per year).
BTS was established in 1992 and became a part of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration in 2005. It administers data collection, analysis and reporting to ensure cost-effective use of transportation-monitoring resources.
Additional information on the STS, including the full 148-page report, is available online at bit.ly/statestats2011.