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In 1989 the Secretary of Transportation initiated a strategic planning process to take stock of the state of the nation’s transportation system—the first such national assessment in more than a decade. The process revealed significant deficiencies in data on the use and performance of the transportation system, prompting USDOT to request a TRB study on data requirements to support strategic transportation policy making and the institutional changes necessary to make those data available on a permanent basis. The report called for the establishment of a statistical agency within USDOT, the development of performance indicators, and regular reporting to the Secretary and Congress on important trends in system performance (Special Report 234: Data for Decisions: Requirements for National Transportation Policy Making; TRB 1992). The report contributed to Congress’s decision to create the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) in 1991. A subsequent report, conducted with the Committee on National Statistics, reviewed BTS’s role in improving the quality of USDOT statistics and made recommendations to enhance this role (The Bureau of Transportation Statistics: Priorities for the Future; NRC 1997).