"Traffic calming" is a euphemism for telling drivers to go fuck themselves. If traffic increases to meet capacity, traffic calming is trying to reverse that. By punishing drivers, and making it incredibly shitty to drive, traffic is reduced.
It's a feature, not a bug.
Instead, it strikes me as both a tool for non-drivers that are "driver hating", as well as those local NIMBYs/etc that don't want those "crazy speeders" through the town ("think of the children").
Next time that folks discuss putting traffic calming bumps in your community, ask whether you want the emergency vehicles to be slowed down when you or your loved ones are waiting for an ambulance. Consider the extra pollution created by all the slowing down and speeding up.
I have spoken to folks familiar with Cambridge, MA government structures, where they have told me that it has been actively refused to re-time/synchronize stop lights to have a green wave because they want the traffic slowed down. New York City has real green waves (e.g. going up 1st ave). So next time you are driving down Massachusetts Ave in the evening and you hit random red lights for no reason, know that someone has explicitly decided to do this to you.
The cases where narrow street widths work better are places where there is more stop and go traffic like downtown areas where majority of the residences are crowded with store-front development. There instead of insisting on narrow lanes, you should insist on complete street designs that appropriately designs for all kinds of traffic.
New urbanist movements seem to be behind this kind of lunacy of trying to create traffic conditions more difficult for cars. In New York, this trend has been set of by the Bloomberg administration and is labeled/marketed as traffic calming. It is really traffic impeding and is the center piece design of urban environments. I admit there are various benefits to it, but the underlying motivations are to be anti-gas guzzling vehicles.