Traffic studies may be a good idea, but they won’t solve the real problem with Lawrence streets: They are poorly planned and often not enough to handle the city’s increasing traffic.

The Lawrence City Commission has adopted an ordinance to require developers to undertake traffic impact or data collection studies for all but the smallest of new construction projects, including residential developments.

It’s well-intended. It may even turn out to be a good move. But it’s not a solution to the city’s traffic problems.

Decades of inept planning, a lack of vision and timid and limited approaches to the underlying increase in traffic are part of the problem. Look no further than the traffic-circulation issues along 23rd Street, including the intersection of 23rd and Iowa cited by Commissioner David Schauner, who initiated consideration of the ordinance.

Selfish resistance from neighborhoods to projects that would have helped move traffic also factor into today’s irritating traffic delays and congestion. Remember the proposals for left-turn lanes on Sixth Street and on Iowa Street that neighbors torpedoed? Think of them the next time traffic backs up through intersections on those streets, or when you see a rear-end collision on them.

Remember Ninth Street, where widening found itself narrowed. Remember the East Lawrence bypass? The list of proposed traffic projects intended to address congestion that died stillborn is a long one. And then there’s one of our favorite projects — narrowing Seventh Street, and changes in the traffic flows around Sixth and New Hampshire streets and Seventh and New Hampshire streets, pushed forward even though studies showed the changes would negatively affect the intersections involved.

All this, of course, says nothing about the South Lawrence Trafficway and any potential it has to alleviate some of the congestion on city streets. But the delay in completing the bypass contributes to today’s problems.

Schauner, who said traffic congestion might provide “a disincentive to go downtown,” and his fellow commissioners might want to consider a potential unintended result of any such study. Probably the “facts” will be used to argue against and in some cases help to defeat any infill project, because that’s exactly the sort of development that might add traffic to our old and already-burdened streets. Isn’t it reasonable to assume, then, that projects will sprawl out, making cross-town or downtown trips even longer?

Opponents of the mandated traffic studies and data collection efforts have cited the costs, and ultimately the pass-along impact on the cost of housing in particular. They may or may not be correct. Somebody pays.

Regardless, it seems it’s the city that should be undertaking a study — a comprehensive study about how to improve, add to, widen and pay for modern streets to meet today’s traffic needs (let alone FUTURE needs.) The fact, as any driver can attest, is that the city does not have the streets it needs to serve the population and the lifestyles of today.

Unfortunately, City Hall’s focus is not on solving the real problem.