The City's traffic engineers rarely, if ever, remove travel lanes from roads that are already at or near capacity to add a bike lane. Their primary objective is still to move as many cars as fast as possible through the system. Travel lanes are only removed for bike lanes if the road in question has the reserve capacity available to do so. In most cases, all existing lanes are preserved and simply narrowed slightly to make room for the bike lane. The alternative, of course, is for the cyclists to ride in the travel lanes; so take your pick - cyclist in front of you in the travel lane, or off to the side in a bike lane?