Transportation Economics in the 21st Century - Commodity Transportation Survey Data

1. Commodity Transportation Survey, Dept. of Transportation

The CTS provides data on national freight flows in manufacturing. Data include quantities shipped and distances of shipments in tons between bilateral pairs of production areas in the United States. The definition of production areas varies across years. Data available for 1963, 1967, and 1972.

Provided by Stephen J. Redding.

• Bilateral Production Area Flows

2. Detailed 1963 Commodity Transportation Survey:

These files contain data on ton and ton-miles of shipments between census divisions and total shipments by mode and by distance. All the files have been digitized from tabulations published in the 1963 Commodity Transportation Survey (CTS).

Provided by Kerem Cosar.

• CTS1963 

As used in: Cosar, Osotimehin and Popov, 2022, “Regional and Aggregate Implications of Transportation Costs”, mimeo.

The Commodity Transportation Survey was superseded by the Commodity Flow Survey

3. 1977 Commodity Transportation Survey (State-State Flows by Value):

Provided by Jordan J. Norris.

• CTS1977.zip

This file contains data on the value of bilateral trade flows between US states from the 1977 Commodity Tranpsortation Survey.

The full (non-digitized) summary of the 1977 Census of Transportation, which includes the Commodity Transportation Survey, is available here.
 
As used in:
- "Dynamic Spatial General Equilibrium" (Benny Kleinman, Ernest Liu and Stephen Redding), Econometrica, 91(2), 385-424, 2023.
- “Fiscal Multipliers in Integrated Local Labor Markets” (Jordan J. Norris), Working Paper: JJNorris - JMP.pdf (dropbox.com)