This has always seemed utterly obvious to me — as it would, I expect, to anybody who’s ever lived in a city where the public transportation options didn’t suck — but it’s nice when people who actually know stuff say it:
There are three main mechanisms through which high-speed rail can help expand the economy, according to the MPI study. First, HSR expands the labor pool available to firms, bringing talented workers from nearby centers within commuting distance and thus expanding the quantity and quality of available employees. Second, HSR makes more jobs available to workers without making them have to relocate and move to a new home. Third, HSR extends the benefits of other expensive, productivity-enhancing infrastructure such as airports across broad regions. International airports, major research universities, and reference libraries are all more financially viable and internationally competitive when they serve a larger population. High-speed rail allows them to build the scale they need to achieve world-class excellence and also spreads their high costs across a wider population.
These are some of the reasons why ridership shouldn’t be the sole metric for evaluating the need for, or the success of, viable public transportation options.
From Richard Florida, who knows something about economics and cities.