In my city, they deliberately designed underpasses with minimal space like that not only to save money, but also because they were at the border between white and black neighborhoods and making it harder for carless people to get through helped enforce segregation. And even now, when they put bike lanes in, they end at such historical barriers because it’s “too expensive” to widen them and taking space from cars is out of the question. In other words, they’re still perpetuating the harm of segregation to this day.