>The popular meme idea of scoffing at road construction because it will just make more people drive misanthropically ignores that driving isn't purely emissions but it also gets people to places where they want to go, like visiting family and friends or allows them to live at a different place from where they work if that's more affordable or more to their liking.
People scoff at road construction (or rather, road widening) as a solution to congestion. I don't think anyone is under the impression that kilometers driven would go down as road bandwidth goes up.
>The road capacity led to more cars on the road, but also to more real demand being met.
No, not necessarily. Maybe some people who would have otherwise used public transport opt to drive instead. Making roads wider could literally make them less efficient, in terms of humans moved per hour per meter of width.