In the years prior to passage of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991, the quality and quantity of transportation data had reached a low ebb. Many federal data-collection programs had come to an end or had been pared back, reflecting increased costs of traditional methods of data collection, shrinking budgets, and curtailed reporting requirements brough about by economic deregulation. In response to the growing information gap, ISTEA resurrected several key data-collection programs, created the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), and required BTS to identify information needs on an ongoing basis. This report summarizes key transportation information needs based on the Bureau's experience in responding to requests for statistics from decisionmakers, and on surveys, research, and conferences that BTS has held or co-sponsored with other organizations.

Each issue concentrates on a different topic.

The author maintains that American politics, institutional arrangements, and political culture have prevented the development of a comprehensive, integrated, intermodal transportation policy in the United States. Dilger makes his argument by examining the development of the national governmental authority in both surface and air transportation. Each transportation mode—highways/mass transit, Amtrak, and civilian air transportation—is examined separately, assessing their development over time and focusing on current controversies, including, but not limited to, the highway versus mass transit funding issue; the recent decentralization of decision making authority on surface transportation policy; Amtrak's viability as an alternative to the automobile; and current antiterrorist policies' effect on transportation policy.