Commodity Flow Survey Workshop. Held on November 16, 2010 at the Keck Center of the National Academies, Washington, D.C, Transportation Research Circular E-C-158

摘要

The importance of the Commodity Flow Survey (CFS) to the freight data community cannot be emphasized enough. The CFS was envisioned as a baseline for establishment-level outbound transportation movements that could be used to understand the flows of goods underlying the U.S. economy, and by extension, assist planners in understanding freight shipments. The first CFS was completed in 1993, with additional surveys completed in 1997 and 2002 before the latest release in 2007. The CFS represents one of the largest primary data collection efforts for national and regional freight activities, including the only publicly available data source of freight moving on highways, which is the largest freight transportation mode in the United States. Its role in providing benchmarks related to the multimodal freight transportation system remains critical for its users and provides a cornerstone for existing freight transportation planning activities as indicated in the panel and poster summaries later in this report. Explaining why these data remain relevant to transportation decisions is essential for continuation of the survey. Federal, state, and private sector all utilize the CFS dataset. The dataset is the same for all users. Confidentiality is maintained for all survey establishments.