Beyond Traffic forum comes to Boston

Boston Mayor Martin Walsh said Monday he was honored to be among the representatives from the Northeast U.S. at the recent U.S. Department of Transportation's Beyond Traffic forum in Boston.

The goal of the regional forum was to discuss the Beyond Traffic report that examines the choices facing America’s transportation infrastructure in the next 30 years, including population growth, increasing freight volumes, demographic shifts and a transportation system facing more frequent extreme weather events.

“I grew up in what some might call a multimodal transportation environment in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester,” Boston Mayor Martin Walsh said. “It was not a car-dependent community. We could walk to the store, to church, to a friend’s house or a park. We could ride our bikes to school or to Boston Harbor. We could get on a subway train or a bus and go to work, almost anywhere in Greater Boston. And if you did have a car, you could drive downtown or get onto an interstate highway in a matter of minutes.”

Solving transportation problems means that the region will need to work together and innovate solutions. Significant investments will also be needed

“Today we have a lot of work to do to find that balance across all our communities, as we adapt to an ever-changing economy,” Walsh said. “It’s going to take both direct action and close collaboration at every level: federal, state, and local; public and private sector.”