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Photo by Ernest Dorszuk/Toronto Sun/Postmedia

“It’s up to a point, inevitable. A successful city is going to be a congested city,” said Eric Miller, University of Toronto civil engineering professor and director of its Transportation Research Institute.

This paradox means the goal of combating congestion will never be to erase it. But that doesn’t mean the status quo is sustainable, especially if every single newcomer decides to hop into a car during rush hour. It’s simple physics: a lane can only carry so many cars per hour, no matter how many people are trying to use it.

“You can’t accommodate all those people and all those trips,” Miller said. “We can’t build enough roads. We have to be finding alternate ways.”

In most cases, the answer comes down to building mass transit in the right places so people have a viable option to driving, though it’s important to remember that individual mobility has to be addressed in conjunction with the movement of goods, and how disruptive technologies such as automation can affect the issue.

We can’t build enough roads. We have to be finding alternate ways Eric Miller, University of Toronto civil engineering professor and director of its Transportation Research Institute

These aren’t separate conversations. It’s critical to build capacity across all modes of transportation and to use existing infrastructure more efficiently, said Yvonne Rene de Cotret, Deloitte Canada’s National Public Sector Transportation leader and co-leader of itsFuture of Mobility practice.

“If we create capacity on our roads by diverting individual passenger traffic onto transit, that could create capacity on roads for handling some of the freight,” she said. “Dealing with congestion around cities is not just about making cities livable for constituents that have to live and work in the region … we’re also dealing with some of the impact the congestion has on the goods movement.”