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The property is large, the federal government owns it, and it’s been redeveloped over and over again in different politicians’ imaginations, though not in real life.

The argument is that spreading jobs around more widely will reduce traffic crowding onto particular roads, reducing the stress on what Leslie calls “pinch points” like the 417-174 split.

Yes and no.

People who live and work in one suburb won’t have to get downtown, and that’s helpful as far as it goes. But what if, as has been known to happen these days, more than one person in a household works? Where does the family move?

For transportation planners, getting people from one high-density area to another is a simple problem. Getting people from a low-density suburb to a high-density downtown and back is trickier but doable. Getting people from one low-density suburb to another low-density suburb is a nightmare. You can’t devise either a road network or a transit system that’s good at getting people from everywhere to everywhere.

In Ottawa we can barely afford rush-hour bus service in outlying neighbourhoods as it is. Inter-suburban bus routes are almost nonexistent because there isn’t enough demand, and a couple of thousand bureaucrats will move the needle but not enough. Stick the Department of Finance in a field in Blackburn Hamlet and how are its highly degreed forecasters and tax experts going to get there from Kanata?

They’re going to drive. Even when the city’s light-rail plans are fulfilled and trains run along Highway 174, it would take an extra station in the highway median and a shuttle on a new road. The DND proving ground isn’t far-far from the 174, but it isn’t close, either.