Highways get built by selling a vision of faster travel. But for most places, congestion will only get worse, and the question becomes how to make the best of congested roads. 

Beeline is an experiment in Singapore that creates new bus routes based on the actual trips that people are taking, rather than an abstract measure like population or job density. Beeline is designed with congestion in mind by promising a commute that is equivalently fast (or more accurately, equivalently slow) and at a similar price point as driving, but without the extra hassle of owning and maintaining a car.

The overall goal is to get people who are currently driving to consider higher-density alternatives that help the city as a whole have more trips with the same road capacity. 

Compare this to Uber or Lyft, where congestion often leads to surge pricing. These are best at off-peak times when they’re clearly faster or cheaper or both. They’re the worst at highly congested times, where infrastructure that gets better at rush hour will win any day.