Mass residential here tends to spawn more and more speed-bumps over time as community action groups and similar demand "safer roads". Even considering that, th

Mass residential here tends to spawn more and more speed-bumps over time as community action groups and similar demand "safer roads". Even considering that, they're very common routes for taxis and private vehicles that want to avoid blockages or traffic-lights. About the only thing they reduce is non-essential trucking. To the other point, regardless of average traffic, it's perfectly possible there'll be a bit of a queue during peak commuting hour(s), and secondly, it seems quite odd that a whole neighbourhood could be disconnected by something like essential road-works or a fallen tree. I'm with you on the somewhere-inbetween approach. Balancing accessibility, traffic density, noise, and fault resilience is tricky, but much moreso is the cost of alterations to existing neighbourhoods built on one style or the other.