Purpose:  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 are working together to create a Transportation Satellite Account (TSA). This project was created to answer how much transportation contributes to the gross domestic product (GDP). BTS estimates approximately 11 percent of the GDP consists of transportation which equates to the percent of goods and services delivered to an end-user.
Coverage:  The TSA covers both for-hire and in-house transportation, presents estimates of in-house transportation on an industry-by-industry basis, and provides not only totals, but also input structures of transportation.
Content:  There are two tables that comprise the TSA. One is the transportation input structure table. It provides the central information of the TSA and identifies the transportation commodity input structure for different industries. The same industry and commodity classification used for the 1992 bench mark I-O accounts will be used for this table. The second table is derived from the transportation input structure table. It compares the value added related to each industry's transportation activities to the total value added of the industry and to GDP.
Frequency:  The estimated completion date of the TSA is in Fall 1997.
Methods:  In measuring the contribution of transportation to the U.S. economy, a number of questions must be answered: how much does the United States spend on transportation and what share does it represent; how does transportation contribute to the GDP; how much is in-house transportation; which commodities are the largest in the transportation sector; how do the changes in the economy change transportation; and how much do businesses and governments spend using transportation services. In measuring transportation, the NIPA and I-O accounts cannot be used since transportation is partially covered in these accounts. The current standard industrial classification (SIC) system only covers the for-hire area, whereas private trucking and trucking done as a secondary activity of nontransportation establishments are not reported separately. Therefore, BEA does not have the full picture of transportation. This substantiates that current statistics do not measure transportation on a consistent basis and that many important questions cannot be adequately answered.
Uses:  The uses of the TSA include inter-industry comparison--GDP contributions and cost structures; inter-industry linkage--what industries depend on for-hire and in-house transportation most, and vice versa; impact analysis--how responsive the rest of the economy is to the changes in the demand for transportation and vice versa; other applications where more detailed information on transportation are needed.
Special Features:  The TSA project so far has the framework adopted; data sources identified; some estimation completed; and the database under development.

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