TQ / Spring 2007
3


TIA Partners Pull It All Together

Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute Provides the Data-Crunching Expertise

The Upper Great Plains Transportation Insti tute (UGPTI) at North Dakota State University, in Fargo, partnered with the Eno Foundation to gather, analyze, and publish data for the 20th edition of Transportation in America. The process called on all the skills of UGPTI's staff, according to Dr. Kim Vachal and Doug Benson, Dr. Kim Vachal project leaders.

"The new TIA provides data that is relevant in today's market," said Dr. Vachal, "and I think the transportation industry was genuinely happy to hear that the publication was coming back."

Benson said UGPTI made the data more useful in a broader way by adding categories that reflect the evolving state of transportation. "Most of all," said Benson, "we wanted to make the data presentation vital and fresh as well as compelling." Benson noted that anyone who has relied on the previous TIAs for data will see for the first time the inclusion of growing transportation modes, such as paratransit and small package business. "We also covered evolving environmental and energy use within transportation industries," said Benson, "and we expanded coverage of transportation construction."

Transit, itself, is becoming more of a topic, not only domestically, but internationally. There are more viable opportunities for transit service, as individuals and communities make decisions

 

about getting around. Paratransit completes the overall transit picture and that addition is one of the most significant improvements from previous TIA editions.

In a larger sense, though, topics like the environment and energy use reach beyond our borders, and including these categories supports our perspective of keeping this edition "international" in its scope.

Vachal and Benson noted the emerging efficiencies in transportation reflected in the downward trend in transportation expenditures versus transportation. They both agreed that the Nation's transportation system is moving more and more goods and services over time in more efficient and more environmentally sensitive ways while lowering the cost to do so.

"The TIA also serves as a policy resource," said Vachal. "It provides policy makers with a bigger picture of the transportation industry, and allows them to make more informed decisions." Vachal said htat the abundance of data coming from the industry presented a challenge to UGPTI. "We didn't attempt to include every detail," said Vachal.

"The goal was to present data that would be understood by the industry and the public, and I believe we did that with this issue."
Doug Benson
Association of American Railroads Brings More Than
Half-a-Century of Partnership to TIA

When members of the Association of American Railroads need data on modal share for their industry-domestic intercity ton-miles, for example-they turn to the Eno Transportation Foundation's Transportation in America for the most reliable and timely statistics. "We've been relying on Transportation in America for years," said Clyde Crimmel, Director of Statistical Information for the Association of American Railroads.

"We have come a long way from the "good old days"; when statistics about the railroad industry were collected by hand from the Interstate Commerce Commission and penciled into spreadsheets," said Crimmel, "But even then, we turned to Transportation in America and its predecessors for market share statistics by mode."

The AAR, formed in 1934 by combining multiple railroad organizations (including one that began in 1867), represents an industry that has long depended on uniform data for everything from achieving standards in equipment design to tracking the movements of over 1.5 million freight cars as they traverse the nation.

  

"We collect Class I [the seven U.S. freight railroads with operating revenues in excess of $319.3 million] data reported to the Surface Transportation Board. In addition to the Class I statistics, we survey over 500 regional and local railroads. These statistics are summarized in various AAR publications, and some are contributed to the Eno database," Crimmel said.

How current that Eno information has been in the past, is best described in this phrase from the AAR website: "Railroad Market Share is based on the data from the Eno Transportation Foundation's Transportation in America. Updated figures have not been published for several years." With the publication of the 20th edition of Transportation in America, that long data drought is about to end, and associations like AAR are looking forward to Eno's newest encyclopedia of stats.

"The data in Transportation in America is a valuable element to the total transportation data base," said Crimmel. "With TIA data, we have a very clear picture of the state of intercity freight movements, and the "modal share"; statistics we rely on."

 


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