Is it suggested to use h:outputText for everything?

If you're using JSF 2.x with Facelets 2.x instead of JSP, then both are equally valid. Even more, Facelets implicitly wraps inline content in a component as represented by <h:outputText> (in other words, it will be escaped!).

Only whenever you'd like to disable escaping using escape="false", or would like to assign id, style, onclick, etc programmatically, or would like to use a converter (either explicit via converter or implicit via forClass), then you need <h:outputText>.

I myself don't use <h:outputText> whenever it is not necessary. Without it, the source code becomes better readable. You can just inline EL in template text like so #{bean.text} instead of doing <h:outputText value="#{bean.text}">. Before JSF 2.0, in JSP and Facelets 1.x, this was not possible and thus the <h:outputText> is mandatory. If your IDE gives warnings on this, it's most likely JSF 1.x configured/minded.

The example you quote is written in XHTML - which is XML. A standalone 'Transport' may not be allowed at the position you want to put it in, so that you need to "transform" it into valid xml.

IIrc this what is called facelets and the default in JSF2, while in JSF1, the presentation code could be done with JSP tags as default and facelets was an alternative that many developers were using).