If it makes you feel any better the oldest streets around here are wider than newer ones, because they had to be able to turn a wagon with a team of horses.
This was the seed that destroyed the American city. Roads were humongous 100 years before car was invented. It was fine, a buffer for the smoke and filth of the industrial city, but still multipurpose, accessible. Once cars started driving on these huge expanses, it turned every city street in a highway; dangerous, polluted, noisy, pushing out other uses, ...