Overview
Thursday, January 7, 2016
The U.S. transportation system serves nearly 319 million Americans, 7.5 million businesses, and 75 million foreign visitors through a network of more than 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 nearly 2 million miles of oil and gas pipelines.
The estimated value of U.S. transportation assets in 2014 was $7.7 trillion. The public owns 51.3 percent of the total transportation asset value, mostly highways and streets, but also publicly held transit facilities, airports, and numerous seaports, inland ports and terminals, and other facilities related to water transportation. Private companies own 30.6 percent of transportation assets, including railroads, pipelines, trucks, planes, and ships. Personal motor vehicles account for the remaining 18.1 percent.
The average person travels about 13,000 miles per year, and domestic businesses ship and receive an average of 63 tons of freight per capita per year in the United States.
The transportation sector accounts for:
- nearly $1.4 trillion in purchases and investments in transportation goods and services—or 8.6 percent of U.S. Gross Domestic Product in 2013,
- $125.7 billion in public and private expenditures on transportation construction in 2014,
- 12.3 million jobs in transportation related industries—or 8.8 percent of the U.S. labor force in 2014,
- about $9,000 average expenditures for each household—or 17.6 percent of household expenditures in 2013,
- about 34,500 lives lost and roughly 2.3 million nonfatal injuries in 2013,
- 70.5 percent of total petroleum consumption in the United States, and
- about 27 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
TABLE 1 Extent of the United States Transportation System: 2000, 2010, and 2013
| Mode | System component | 2000 | 2010 | 2013 |
Percent change 2000-2013 |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Highway | Roads and bridges | |||||
| Public road and street mileage | 3,936,222 | 4,067,076 | 4,115,462 | 4.6% | ↑ | |
| Bridges | 587,135 | 604,460 | 607,708 | 3.5% | ↑ | |
| Lane-miles | 8,224,245 | 8,581,158 | 8,656,070 | 5.3% | ↑ | |
| Vehicles and Use | ||||||
| Registered vehicles | 225,821,241 | 250,070,048 | 255,876,822 | 13.3% | ↑ | |
| Highway vehicle-miles travelled | 4,550,574 | 4,244,157 | 4,306,717 | -5.4% | ↓ | |
| Highway passenger-miles travelled | 2,746,925 | 2,967,266 | 2,988,323 | 8.8% | ↑ | |
| Air | Airports and pilots | |||||
| Airports | 19,281 | 19,802 | 19,453 | 0.9% | ↑ | |
| Pilots | 625,581 | 627,588 | 599,086 | -4.2% | ↓ | |
| Aircraft and use | ||||||
| General aviation aircraft | 217,533 | 223,370 | 199,927 | -8.1% | ↓ | |
| Commercial aircraft | 7,826 | 7,185 | 6,733 | -14.0% | ↓ | |
| Passenger enplanements | U | 720,500,000 | 743,200,000 | 3.2% | ↑1 | |
| Air revenue passenger-miles | U | 798,000,000 | 840,400,000 | 5.3% | ↑2 | |
| Enplaned revenue ton-miles | U | 65,000,000 | 62,000,000 | -4.6% | ↓3 | |
| Transit | Transit Vehicles | |||||
| Rail transit vehicles | 17,114 | 20,374 | 20,372 | 19.0% | ↑ | |
| Non-rail transit vehicles | 89,022 | 115,300 | 116,609 | 31.0% | ↑ | |
| Transit Use | ||||||
| Rail transit passenger-miles travelled | 24,583 | 29,353 | 32,305 | 31.4% | ↑ | |
| Non-rail transit passenger-miles travelled | 20,517 | 23,274 | 24,162 | 17.8% | ↑ | |
| Rail transit unlinked passenger trips | 3.36 | 4.47 | 4.81 | 43.1% | ↑ | |
| Non-rail transit unlinked passenger trips | 5.36 | 5.49 | 5.60 | 4.5% | ↑ | |
| Rail | Amtrak/passenger rail and use | |||||
| Locomotives | 378 | 282 | 418 | 10.6% | ↑ | |
| Passenger cars | 1,894 | 1,274 | 1,447 | -23.6% | ↓ | |
| System mileage | 23,000 | 21,178 | U | -7.9% | ↓1 | |
| Stations | 515 | 519 | 518 | 0.6% | ↑3 | |
| Passengers (millions) | 20.9 | 28.7 | 30.9 | 47.6% | ↑ | |
| Passenger-miles travelled (millions) | 5,498 | 6,420 | 6,810 | 23.9% | ↑ | |
| Class I/freight rail and use | ||||||
| Locomotives | 20,028 | 23,893 | 25,033 | 25.0% | ↑ | |
| Freight cars | 560,154 | 397,730 | 373,838 | -33.3% | ↓ | |
| Car companies and shippers freight cars | 688,194 | 809,544 | 873,679 | 27.0% | ↑ | |
| System mileage | 99,250 | 95,700 | 95,235 | -4.0% | ↓ | |
| Ton-miles (trillion) | 1.47 | 1.69 | 1.74 | 18.7% | ↑ | |
| Water | Seaports and Waterways | |||||
| Seaports (handling over 250,000 tons) | 197 | 178 | 182 | -7.6% | ↓ | |
| Waterway facilities (including cargo handling docks) | 9,309 | 8,060 | 8,231 | -11.6% | ↓ | |
| Miles of navigable waterways | 25,000 | 25,000 | 25,000 | 0.0% | ↓ | |
| Domestic vessels | ||||||
| Recreational boats, millions | 12.8 | 12.4 | 12.0 | -6.2% | ↓ | |
| U.S.-Flag privately owned merchant fleet (1,000 GT or over) | 282 | 221 | 187 | -33.7% | ↓ | |
| Barge/non-self-propelled vessels | 33,152 | 31,412 | 31,081 | -6.2% | ↓ | |
| Self-propelled vessels | 8,202 | 9,078 | 8,918 | 8.7% | ↑ | |
| Pipeline | Mileage | |||||
| Gas distribution | 1,788,100 | 2,101,921 | 2,149,382 | 20.2% | ↑ | |
| Transmission | 298,957 | 304,775 | 302,811 | 1.3% | ↑ | |
| Gathering | 27,561 | 19,640 | 17,437 | -36.7% | ↓ | |
| Hazardous liquid or CO2 systems | U | 181,974 | 192,388 | 5.7% | ↑4 | |
KEY: U = Data are unavailable
1 2000-2010
2 2000-2011
3 2000-2012
4 since 2010
SOURCE: Various sources as cited in U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, National Transportation Statistics, available at http://www.bts.gov/ as of November 2015.