DOT secretary Mineta unveils transportation services index

DOT secretary Mineta unveils transportation services index    U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta announced at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday that the Department of Transportation (DOT) has developed the Transportation Services Index, a new economic indicator, to measure the performance of the U.S. economy as reflected in the movement of freight and passengers.
   The new index, to be called TSI, will draw from eight constituent indexes, five pertaining to freight and three to passengers.
   The freight measures in the TSI will include for-hire trucking and parcel services, freight railroad services, inland waterway traffic, pipeline movements and air freight.
   The passenger transportation measures in the new index will include local transit, intercity passenger rail, and air passenger transportation.
   The first TSI numbers, taken from data ending in December 2003, will be released in March.
   More specifically, TSI will draw from DOT’s own internal data and information provided by the Army Corps of Engineers, the Energy Information Administration, the American Trucking Associations, the Association of American Railroads, the Federal Railroad Administration, and the American Public Transportation Association.
   Jack Wells, chief economist for the DOT’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics, said that data would not be solicited initially from private-sector third party logistics providers.
   Beginning in March, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics will publish a monthly TSI report that will be provided at www.bts.gov and summarized in a press release.
   “In addition to a combined index, separate freight and passenger indexes will be released each month. The index does not tell how much transportation activity has taken place. Instead, it indicates changes in transportation activity,” the DOT said in a statement.
   “The new Transportation Services Index will fill a crucial void by finally giving us a single number to measure how much transportation means to the American economy,” Mineta said at a press conference in the Stock Exchange.
   When asked by Shippers’ News Wire what the TSI’s freight indexes might show if 100 percent of containers coming into the U.S. were to be checked — as urged in the Democratic Party’s response to President Bush’s State of the Union message — Mineta said that a pragmatic balance would have to be achieved between optimum security and the flow of commerce.
   “We don’t have the technology generally available yet, although some scanners have proved promising, to check every container without causing delays that could adversely affect trade,” he said.
   “But the TSI will certainly prove to be a benchmark of the transportation sector’s impact on the economy,” Mineta explained.
   “In fact, the index will show how much keeping the economy moving is about keeping America moving,” he said.