[mikestew]

The implication seems to be that they took away a car lane to make a bike lane. It's entirely possible that the car lane was going away anyway, and they simply used the left-over space to make bike lanes.

So why did they take away the car lane, if not to make bike lanes? From what I've read, and observed here in Redmond, WA, is that the current fashion is to reduce four lane streets to three lanes (two directional, one center turn lane). The goal is to slow traffic in residential areas and...I forget what the other goals are. Anyway, it's a thing now. In your situation, perhaps they took away lanes to meet the current fashion, bike lanes just being the icing on that cake, or maybe they really did do it put bike lanes in.

[squidfood]

Here, they took a 3-lane two 2-lane+bike. Center wasn't turn lane, it was an alternating-direction in morning/evening. It was definitely part of a citywide "make bike lanes" initiative, if slowdowns were considered, that was the icing.