[Aylmer]

Infrastructure and planning can't tell you where you'll live, but whether we like it or not, it does draw the boundaries of the realm of possible places to live, work or socialize.

Think of it - if there were no roads crossing the Greenbelt, would people still buy houses in Kanata or Barrhaven expecting to be able to commute into town? Maybe some people would trek through the woods, but I think we can all agree that the population would be MUCH smaller.

The opposite is also true; say there was a direct hyperloop line that would get you to Petawawa in 15 minutes. You can bet that Petawawa would develop in a way it most certainly would not have done otherwise.

And that's an obvious truth that often escapes discussion about transportation networks: They both respond to demand and shape demand. We obsess over the former, but we hardly ever talk about the latter (although it happens more and more now).

We are often very fatalistic about transportation demand, seeing it as a rising tide we can either accommodate or drown in. But in reality, it's a feedback loop where each attempt to quench demand creates demand which must be quenched. And the evidence does indeed show that you can never build your way out of congestion, be it with superbypasses, cycleways, LRT or hyperloops. It is important that we truly grasp the truth that it is just not possible.
And if we don't address the rising tide? People aren't stupid - we make different choices: we'll travel at different times, travel to different destinations or use different ways of getting there. We will make our transportation choices according to what is and isn't possible, just like we do for every other aspect of our lives. I might want a Mustang, but since I don't have the money for it, I won't ask taxpayers to pay me one - I'll just have to get a Honda instead. Why should it be different for my transportation choices? Will traffic get worse in Jockvale and Manotick? Of course. But it won't be any better with a bypass.

So if nothing can ever truly satisfy demand, what's left over is infrastructure's effects on shaping demand. Cities with lots of transit and cities with a lot of highways have generally similar commute times, but look very different. And that's the big question we have to ask when thinking about infrastructure; what do we want our city to look like?

To draw a simplistic caricature:
- If we don't build a new highway, people will commute for about 40 minutes in a healthier, more compact city.
- If we build a new highway, people will commute for about 40 minutes in a less livable, less compact city.

No matter how much we try, we can't meaningfully impact the 40 minutes part, but we have more power than we think on the rest.