the main drag through my part of town has a center turn lane and 4 fairly narrow travel lanes. Speed limit is 40, I'm routinely passed by people going 60. My thought is that the width and openness of the road is contributing to dangerous levels of speeding and not doing anything to decrease traffic congestion. In fact, they have the lights timed to stop everyone 7 times before they get downtown, I assume this is a misguided traffic calming measure.

I would like to go to left turn lanes, one travel lane each way, and bike lanes. There is never a level of traffic that justifies 4 travel lanes. There probably was decades ago before the bypass was built around town. Now it just creates a no-man's land that isn't conducive to anything other than driving a motor vehicle.

To better address your question, I think the center lanes do encourage speeding. They should probably be replaced with left turn lanes and islands.