Welcome

Dr. Ashish K. Sen

Welcome to the first edition of BTS NEWS – a quarterly newsletter designed to keep you up on the happenings at the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), the federal source for transportation statistics.

First, let us introduce ourselves. BTS is a 10 -year-old agency in the U.S. Department of ­Transportation that collects and distributes ­information on all forms of transportation. We were created as the transportation counterpart to the more well-known statistical agencies of the ­federal government, such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Center for Educational Statistics.

Although we are growing rapidly, BTS remains a small agency engaged in many wide-ranging ­activities to improve the quality of transportation ­statistics and to make data more accessible to more people. These activities include ­improvement of databases, collection of more data, and better dissemination of data.

Why is this important? We believe that ­better access to information leads to more informed decisions at all levels of ­government, in the private sector, and by consumers who are selecting their flights or their way to travel.

Transportation makes up 11 percent of our nation’s Gross Domestic Product. With better information, we can make that significant part of our economy safer and more productive. We can improve ­mobility and security. And we can contribute to environmental efforts.

In this quarterly newsletter, we will tell you what the people at BTS are doing to improve transportation statistics. At the same time, we will offer tips and insights on finding transportation data because our mission is making good transportation data available to ­everyone.

Dr. Ashish Sen, Director
Bureau of Transportation Statistics