Transportation Satellite Accounts - A Look at Transportation's Role in the Economy

The Transportation Satellite Accounts (TSAs) provide a means for measuring the contribution of transportation services to the national economy. Prior to the TSAs, the magnitude of transportation services had long been underestimated, as most national measures counted only the value of for-hire services. Measurement of services provided only by for-hire firms misses the sizable contribution of transportation services that take place within nontransportation industries, termed as in-house transportation.

To more accurately measure transportation services, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) of the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce, jointly developed the Transportation Satellite Accounts (TSAs). The TSAs, as a supplement to the U.S. Input-Output (I-O) Accounts, measure the contribution of both for-hire and in-house transportation. The TSAs include all seven of the for-hire transportation industries reported in the U.S. I-O accounts and four in-house transportation modes.

This report describes the TSAs in detail and provides both summary and detailed tables for the 1997 benchmark TSAs.