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Yes, that's my understanding as well. I guess my concern was directing all SEO Equity (through 301s and canonical tags) to a page that can't be found through the natural navigation of the website. Which I understand is something Google pays attention to when crawling a site. Thanks

301 is the best solution possible. Many people have asserted that you can see up to a 10% dip initially. (Most people only see dips from a week to a month at most.) However, over the long-term, with a better site & URL structure, you should see a rise in traffic. I have no seen anyone doing a predictive modle on this. Seer Interactive did this test 301 Redirect Test: How Much Link Juice are YOU Losing? which saw no rankings lost, but favorable outcomes in the long-term for the better site.