Preventing the construction…

Preventing the construction of bike lanes that remove a car lane will not save anyone any time. It will cost everyone more time. Every cyclist is a potential car not on the street. Doesn't matter if there's 2 lanes when you still have added congestion from the extra cars on the street. Not to mention that cyclists won't completely go away if you do this. Those without the means to drive will still cycle, but now they'll be on the road. So they're in more danger. Even if you don't care about the lives of cyclists, accidents where a cyclist is hit cause congestion cause a car blocks off a lane anyways. So what will cyclists do to avoid this? Use their right to take the full lane. Then the entire lane gets to go at the speed of the cyclist. That means even slower traffic.

The only surefire way to reduce congestion is to reduce the number of cars on the road. It needs to be safe and convenient to walk, bike and take the bus so people don't need to drive everywhere. Cyclists being forced to ride on the sidewalks if they're not brave enough to take the lane means walking is less safe which means less pedestrians. That means more cars for short trips again increasing congestion. If you make biking safe and convenient, make it easy to walk places and for longer trips keep transit moving smoothly you can reduce the number of cars on the road so even if there was only one lane there's still less congestion.