A Transportation Finance Statistics Makeover

Tuesday, December 31, 2024

Today, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) released Transportation Public Finance Statistics (TPFS) final annual estimates for the first time. This release replaces the June preliminary estimate with actuals. TPFS provides information on transportation-related revenue and expenditures for all levels of Government, including Federal, state, and local, and for all modes of transportation. This data program replaced the former Government Transportation Financial Statistics (GTFS).

As seen in the chart below, funding available for transportation increased dramatically in 2022. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) dedicated $90.0 billion to the Highway Account of the Highway Trust Fund and $28.0 billion to the Mass Transit Account of the Highway Trust Fund. Those $118.0 billion in funds show up in the Highway Trust Fund and as supporting revenue in 2022. Supporting revenue are funds collected from non-transportation activities but dedicated to support transportation programs.

When adjusted for inflation, expenditures continued to decline in 2022, as 2022 marked a year of historically high inflation that will reduce the buying power of BIL in future years.¹ As projects move through various stages of approval and design, we expect to see an increase in expenditures from the increased spending in BIL.

Bar chart showing Government Transportation Revenue and Expenditures 2010-2022

In June of 2024, BTS released preliminary TPFS state and local estimates for highway revenue, highway expenditures, water revenue and water expenditures. The following summarizes the percent accuracy of each estimated category:

Highway revenue fell within 1% of actuals,
Highway expenditures fell within 1% of actuals,
Water revenue fell within 7% of actuals and
Water expenditures fell within 5% of actuals.

Although the water estimates were less accurate, they represent a significantly smaller portion of total state and local revenue and expenditures, less than 3% of revenues and 2% of expenditures. Estimated state and local highway revenue and expenditures represent 23% of revenues and 27% of expenditures.

What's new about TPFS?
BTS now releases preliminary statistics each June, and the final data in December, increasing the timeliness of the statistics by six months. In addition to reporting preliminary estimates only 18 months after the one-year reference period (e.g., data for the 2023 reference period is published in June 2025), BTS releases final figures 24 months after the one-year reference period (e.g., data for the 2023 reference period is published December 2025).

TPFS expands upon the existing expenditures and revenues of GTFS, by including new data sources, such as the full Amtrak financials. TPFS includes additional categories to address policy questions – including expenditures broken down between capital and non-capital spending, while revenues now show user-based revenues (i.e., transit fares). TPFS also differentiates between Federal cash flows from transportation trust funds separately from general funds.

TPFS Products:
Website
Data Tabulation Tool
Download the full TPFS dataset
TPFS User Guide
TPFS Technical Documentation

TPFS Visualizations:
Revenue
Expenditure
Revenue and Expenditure
Archived data

¹ https://www.bts.gov/data-spotlight/increases-highway-construction-costs-could-reduce-bil-funding-allocated