The government plays an important role in the U.S. transportation system, both as a provider of transportation infrastructure and an administrator and regulator of the system. The government spends a large amount of funds on building, rehabilitating, maintaining, operating, and administering the infrastructure system. These activities are primarily supported by government revenue generated from several sources including user fees, taxes from transportation and non-transportation-related activities, borrowing, or grants from Federal, State, and local governments.

BTS reports on government transportation financial statistics, namely transportation- related revenue and expenditures for all levels of government, including Federal, State, and local, and for all modes of transportation. The data are compiled based on a conceptual framework of the Government Transportation Financial Statistics (GTFS), which was established for the publication of the GTFS 2009. Based on the conceptual framework, MacroSys updated the statistics up to 2009 to the extent that the data are available. These data are available on the BTS website at https://www.bts.dot.gov/archive/publications/government_transportation_financial_statistics/2012/index.html. Within this report, MacroSys defines concepts related to transportation revenue and expenditures, and explains the sources used to develop GTFS.

The key sources of data used in this report include information released from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Air Transport Association (ATA), the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Federal Transit Administration (FTA), Surface Transportation Board (STB), and Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation.