Uncertain recovery in traffic - statistical commentary

The apparent recovery in traffic in the late summer and fall may be weakening with freight and trucking looking especially shaky in the most recent data. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) combined transportation services index (TSI)  - a seasonally adjusted monthly series combining all kinds of transportation - looked to be recovering June, July and August going up a cumulative 2.7% in those three months. But September and now October have seen over half those gains lost with declines of 0.6% and 0.9%.

see Table 1 nearby

Freight rose from 93.5 in May to 96.2 in August 2.7 percentage points (pp) improvement, but with a drop in September of 0.5pp and a big 1.2pp drop just announced today for October, by now 1.7pp of the 2.7pp recovery in the summer has been lost.

Freight services at 94.5 are still well below their year 2000 level (100). Freight peaked at around 110 in 2004, stuck around that same level for three more years (2005, 2006 and 2007) dropped 4pp in 2008 and is down an alarming 10.5pp this year.

BTS says in a release today:

"The Freight TSI measures the month-to-month changes in freight shipments in ton-miles, which are then combined into one index. The index measures the output of the for-hire freight transportation industry and consists of data from for-hire trucking, rail, inland waterways, pipelines and air freight.

"The October Freight TSI of 94.5 is a 1.0 percent increase from the recent low of 93.5 reached in May. In May, the index was at its lowest level in more than a decade since June 1997. The Freight TSI is down 16.3 percent from its historic peak of 112.9 reached in May 2006.

"The 5.8 percent decline in the first 10 months of 2009 was the largest for the January-to-October period since a 6.0 percent decline for the first 10 months of 2000.

"The October Freight TSI of 94.5 is the lowest for October since October 1996 when it was 88.8. The 10.5 percent decline in the Freight TSI from October 2008 to October 2009 was the largest October-to-October decline in the 20 years for which the TSI is calculated.

"The freight index is also down 14.2 percent in the five years from October 2004. The index is down 9.3 percent in the 10 years from October 1999."

at http://www.bts.gov/press_releases/2009/bts057_09/html/bts057_09.html#table_04

Passenger traffic is not down as much as freight but after summer growth of 2.5pp (108.7 May to 111.2 August) the autumn (Sept, Oct) has seen a setback of 0.9pp to 110.3.

Roads

Road travel as measured by vehicle miles traveled seems to see a continued creep back up after reaching a bottom March through May. Based on a 12 month moving total (Figure 1 nearby) the aggregate billion vehicle-distance traveled which peaked at 3,038 in Nov-07 seems to have bottomed this spring with March thru May numbers of 2,914, 2,915 and 2, 914 (a drop of 4%).

The number has grown each month June through September by an aggregate 0.6% to 2,932. The number has now recovered to the level of May 2004.

A moving total while perhaps more sturdy month to month is a lagging indicator compared to individual months seasonally adjusted, so it is not necessarily inconsistent with the TSI data. It may follow them down in a few months time if there is a continued decline in the TSI data.  

Border crossing traffic down still, but down less year over year

Public Border Operators Association (PBOA) has just released data for November 2009 at their eleven toll crossings (10 toll bridges and Detroit-Windsor Tunnel) at the US-Canadian border (Michigan, New York to Ontario).

Traffic at 2.72m was down about 2% as compared to 2.77m Nov 2008. But these numbers are still way down (c17%) on Nov 2006 3.26m and Nov 2007 3.28m. A goodly chunk of this decline represents the collapses at GM and Chrysler and the associated auto parts trading Michigan-Ontario, but the eastern crossings New York-Ontario that are more diversified also are down very substantially on the 2006, 2007 baseline.

Year-to-date numbers for the first eleven months of 2009 were 30.41m v 35.05m Jan-Nov 2008, a drop of 13.2%.

TOLLROADSnews 2009-12-09