The absurd thing about that is not that it exists but that, seemingly counterintuitively, it actually does help.
People are so incredibly bad at merging when there's congestion that in some cases its actually better to strategically force a merge early and have a single lane through some areas than it is to provide two lanes and let people merge incorrectly. This is especially true where the second lane is only temporary, when the congestion stretches from one single lane section to another with some two lane part in between: close the second lane in between and you don't get people dividing and then trying to merge back in, slowing things down further.