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U.S. Transportation Secretary Slater Announces Availability of New Transportation Information Service on National Transportation Library Internet Site

Contact BTS 1-00 Carole Zok 202-366-5694

Monday, January 10, 2000 -- U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney E. Slater today joined the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) and the Transportation Research Board (TRB) in announcing the availability of TRIS Online on the National Transportation Library’s (NTL) Internet site.

Monday, January 10, 2000 -- U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney E. Slater today joined the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) and the Transportation Research Board (TRB) in announcing the availability of TRIS Online on the National Transportation Library’s (NTL) Internet site.

"This initiative is another example of President Clinton’s and Vice President Gore’s efforts to make government more accessible to every American," Secretary Slater said at the TRIS Online ribbon tying ceremony at the79th Annual Meeting of the TRB. "The partnership between the Department and TRB further facilitates transportation research by making information more available to the American people as we move into the 21st century and the new millennium."

TRIS, Transportation Research Information Service, is the world’s largest and most comprehensive bibliographic database on transportation, and has been developed by TRB over the past 30 years with support from state and federal agencies. Web access to TRIS is a result of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Department’s BTS and TRB that was signed at the 78th annual meeting of TRB last year.

The MOU provides for the development, testing, and implementation of a fully searchable public-domain, web-based version of the TRIS database. TRIS Online contains over 400,000 records of published and on-going research on all modes of transportation. TRIS Online will enhance TRIS by allowing users access to electronic copies of full text reports or to link them directly to the publishers or suppliers that produce the documents. TRIS Online is now a vital core component of the NTL being developed by BTS.

The NTL makes available major transportation materials from around the world, indexes transportation web pages, and will ultimately provide a national union catalog of the country’s major public and private transportation library collections and statistical databases. The NTL staff now respond to approximately 25,000 e-mail and telephone inquiries annually.

TRIS will continue to be produced by TRB, and BTS will publish and make the database available on the Internet as a component of the NTL and will also provide the links to full text reports and document publishers. It is anticipated that within three years, more than 70 percent of government reports listed in TRIS Online will be available electronically for downloading, printing or through e-mail requests.

Visit TRIS Online at http://ntl.bts.gov/tris and the NTL at http://ntl.bts.gov/. BTS also offers a statistical information hotline at (800) 853-1351 and can be reached at http://www.bts.gov. The BTS contact for technical assistance is Cynthia Sparkman, (202) 366-5684.