Infrastructure Practice Test

In an urban planning brief, a secondary-source excerpt notes that transportation infrastructure does more than move people: a new grade-separated ring road and commuter rail line can redirect investment toward interchanges and stations, increasing land values nearby while bypassed neighborhoods lose through-traffic and retail. The author argues that these networks shape urban form by concentrating growth in corridors and nodes rather than evenly across the city. Which statement best reflects the excerpt’s main claim about transportation infrastructure and urban development?

A secondary-source urban history excerpt (about 100 words) explains that a city’s early streetcar network enabled dense, linear growth along corridors, while later highway construction encouraged outward expansion and separated land uses. The excerpt argues that infrastructure investments do not simply respond to growth; they can actively enable or constrain particular urban forms over time. Which statement best reflects this argument?

A. Infrastructure follows urban form but never influences it.

B. Transport networks can steer development patterns by changing accessibility and preferred locations for housing and commerce.

C. The only meaningful effect of transport infrastructure is improved vehicle speed, not land-use change.

D. Corridor growth from streetcars occurs only in contemporary megacities, not in historical contexts.

E. Because all residents can use streets, transport investments have identical impacts across the city.