  (Abridged) We present the results of an analysis of relativistic jet apparent
speeds from VLBI images in the Radio Reference Frame Image Database (RRFID).
The images are snapshot VLBI images at 8 and 2 GHz using the VLBA plus up to
ten additional antennas that provide global VLBI coverage. We have analyzed the
8 GHz images from the first five years of the database (1994-1998), for all
sources observed at three or more epochs during this time range. This subset
comprises 966 images of 87 sources. The sources in this subset have an average
of 11 epochs of observation over the years 1994-1998, with the best-observed
sources having 19 epochs. About half of the sources in this RRFID kinematic
survey have not been previously studied with multi-epoch VLBI observations. We
have measured apparent speeds for a total of 184 jet components in 77 sources,
of which the best-measured 94 component speeds in 54 sources are used in the
final analysis. The apparent speed distribution shows a peak at low apparent
speeds (consistent with stationary components), a tail extending out to
apparent speeds of about 30c, and a mean apparent speed of 3.6c. A total of 36
of the sources in this paper are also included in the 2 cm VLBA survey by
Kellermann et al., with similar angular resolution, sensitivity, and time
range. For those sources, we present a detailed component-by-component
comparison of the apparent speeds measured by the 2 cm survey and those
measured in this paper. Many of the independent apparent speed measurements
agree very well, but for approximately 25% of the components we find
significant differences in the apparent speeds measured by the two surveys. The
leading cause of these discrepancies are differences in how the two surveys
have identified jet components from epoch-to-epoch.
