IN THIS ISSUE:

Did you know that in the years between 1990 and 2004, almost 250,000 miles of rural roads simply vanished? That over those same 14 years, nearly half-a-million miles of urban roads were created? And did you know that, as a percentage of gross domestic income, the nation's transportation outlays in 2004 decreased to their lowest levels of the past decade, 11.5 percent?

If you weren't aware of those statistics, you can be forgiven, because, until now, you haven't been able to read the one publication that reveals those numbers and hundreds more. But, with the release of the 20th Edition of Transportation in America, all that is about to change.

Fifty Years of History
What began half-a-century ago as a time- and labor-intensive effort to create a practical statistical snapshot of the state of the railroad industry, has, through the march of time and the rise of computers, emerged in 2007 as the 20th edition of Transportation in America. From 18 boxes of papers, compiled in the 1950s, and filled with hand-calculated data supplied by the Interstate Commerce Commission and the American Association of Railroads, TIA has evolved into a masterwork of transportation industry analysis.

Breaking with five decades of tradition, TIA's 20th edition offers 21st century data drillers, as well as casual readers, the best of both worlds: clear, easy-to-comprehend charts and graphs, and a veritable cornucopia of exacting tables covering everything from the waterfront (U.S. Port Rankings by Cargo Volume) to the railways (Railroad Intermodal Traffic Volumes), to the highways and skyways (Domestic Small Shipments of Major Carriers).

Credit for this new edition can be allocated in equal parts:The vision of the Eno Transportation Foundation's President and CEO, Tom Downs; the enthusiastic commitment of the Foundation's Board of Directors; invaluable source partnerships with more than three dozen industry corporations, associations, individuals, and federal agencies; and the resources of the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute of North Dakota State University.

The Vision
As the grandson and son of Union Pacific Railroad workers, and as an REA bag handler in high school. Tom Downs remembers when train yard inventories, the industry's basic database, were largely managed on paper, by people walking through the yard actually writing down the contents and destination of the waiting cars. Freight allocation decisions were made based on hand-processed data. It was a model unchanged for more than half-a-century. It was also a model challenged by trucking and air freight haulers employing faster, more efficient models of package movement through the use of computers and outmoded by the emergence of radio frequency interference chips (RFIs) and global positioning satellites (GPS).

The new data management technologies were allowing industries willing to adopt them the ability to make quantum leaps in the efficiencies needed to grow businesses, improve customer services, and hold costs to absolute minimums.

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