“If you look at the current dominant modes of transportation—highways and aviation—they are capacity constrained, capital starved, and there is not much in the way of optimism about either of them,” said Tom Downs, the Washington-based chairman of Paris-based Veolia Transportation.
“Your capacity seems to be pretty much unlimited for rail.”
The coming boom in passenger rail is so palpable, he said, that traditional rail companies that long ago abandoned passenger service are demanding a return to the business. …
“All of these [other modes of transportation] are becoming a little more obsolete, a little more constrained,” Downs said. ”It is next to impossible to add a lane to a freeway in urban America today.” …
Young workers are choosing urban homes where they have many transportation options other than cars, the panelists agreed. … “The creative workforce they want to attract wants to be in the city and doesn’t want to be on some isolated campus,” Hamilton said.
“A significant portion of that population doesn’t own a car and doesn’t want to own a car,” Downs said of young workers. ”Mostly they’re downtown because they have transportation choices that are rich and varied and dependable, and that are expanding.”
