The transportation system of the United States connects 118.7 million households, 7.4 million business establishments, and 89 thousand governmental units with one another and the rest of the world through 4 million miles of roads, more than 19,000 public and private use airports, about 140,000 miles of freight and passenger railroads, 25,000 miles of navigable waterways, and 2 million miles of pipelines.

The estimated value of U.S. transportation assets in 2012 was $7.7 trillion. The public owns 51.2 percent of the total transportation asset value, mostly highways and streets, but also publicly held airports, waterways, and transit facilities. Private companies own 31.2 percent of transportation assets, including railroads, pipelines, trucks, planes, and ships. Personal motor vehicles account for the remaining 17.7 percent.

The average person travels more than 13,600 miles per year, and domestic businesses ship and receive 63 tons of freight per year on average for every man, woman, and child in the United States.

The transportation sector accounts for:

• over $1 trillion in purchases of and investments in transportation goods and services,
• $134 billion of public expenditures on operations and maintenance of the U.S. transportation system—just more than one-third of which was spent on highways,
• nearly 12 million jobs in transportation-related industries,
• nearly $9,000 average expenditures for each household per year,
• nearly 34,400 lives lost and over 2 million nonfatal injuries each year,
• 70.1 percent of total petroleum consumption in the United States, and
• about 1.8 billion annual metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

TABLE 1 Extent of the United States Transportation System

Excel

KEY: U = Data are unavailable

SOURCES: Various sources as cited in the U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, National Transportation Statistics. Available at http://www.bts.gov as of October 2014.