Transportation Systems Sector: Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources

Sector Overview

The nation's transportation system quickly, safely, and securely moves people and goods through the country and overseas. The Transportation Systems Sector consists of six key subsectors, or modes:

1. Aviation includes aircraft, air traffic control systems, and approximately 450 commercial airports and 19,000 additional airfields. This mode includes civil and joint use military airports, heliports, short takeoff and landing ports, and seaplane bases.
2. Highway encompasses more than 4 million miles of roadways and supporting infrastructure. Vehicles include automobiles, buses, motorcycles, and all types of trucks.
3. Maritime Transportation System consists of about 95,000 miles of coastline, 361 ports, over 10,000 miles of navigable waterways, 3.4 million square miles of Exclusive Economic Zone to secure, and intermodal landside connections, which allow the various modes of transportation to move people and goods to, from, and on the water.
4. Mass Transit includes multiple-occupancy vehicles, such as transit buses, trolleybuses, vanpools, ferryboats, monorails, heavy (subway) and light rail, automated guideway transit, inclined planes, and cable cars designed to transport customers on local and regional routes.
5. Pipeline Systems include vast networks of pipeline that traverse hundreds of thousands of miles throughout the country, carrying nearly all of the Nation's natural gas and about 65 percent of hazardous liquids, as well as various chemicals.
6. Rail consists of hundreds of railroads, more than 143,000 route-miles of track, more than 1.3 million freight cars, and roughly 20,000 locomotives.