Rural Transportation Website Now Available on Internet

Contact BTS 10-00 Carole Zok DOT 202-366-5694 Susan McEvoy USDA 202-720-4623

Monday, July 24, 2000 -- The U.S. Department of Transportation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture today announced the launching of a joint Internet website, Rural and Agricultural Transportation: Data and Information Resources, http://www.bts.gov/ntl/ruraltransport, providing direct access through more than 600 links to agricultural and rural transportation information and data.

"This joint effort is part of President Clinton’s 1998 action plan to strengthen rural communities for the 21st century through improved transportation," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney E. Slater. "Rural transportation planners and other rural citizens throughout the nation can use the website to tap a vast reservoir of information to enable rural areas and small communities to share fully in the economic and social benefits which the transportation system can provide.

"Agriculture is a major user of freight transportation services in the country," said U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman. "This website provides producers and shippers of agricultural products easy access to USDA’s up-to-date information on freight rates for grain and other commodities, the result of agricultural transportation research studies, the logistical challenges presented by biotechnology and the increasing demand for identity-preservation, and export information necessary to keep our farmers globally competitive."

The website provides links to information about freight, passenger travel and tourism, safety, economic and community development, the environment, energy usage, rural air service, intelligent transportation systems and transportation on public and tribal lands.

Visitors to the new website can access major bibliographic databases on transportation and agriculture. The National Transportation Library, and TRIS (Transportation Research Information Services) Online provide more than 450,000 records, technical reports, journals, and notices of research in progress in transportation. Agricola (Agricultural OnLine Access) and its companion database CRIS (Current Research Information System) provide similarly extensive coverage of agricultural literature and research.

The website project resulted from President Clinton’s July 1998 announcement of a Strengthening Rural America initiative, which called for a long-term agricultural transportation strategy implemented through the USDA and the DOT. At the USDA’s Agricultural Transportation Summit in Kansas City in 1998, Secretary Slater and Secretary Glickman signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) forming the USDA-USDOT Rural Transportation Task Force to work on issues concerning rural mobility and transportation services. The task force created Rural and Agricultural Transportation: Data and Information Resources, the new website.